


You Must Like Me For Me

by allyasavestheday



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst with a Happy Ending, Beacon Hills Lacrosse Team, Cheerleaders, Coming Out, Coming of Age, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Healing, Light Angst, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-05-14 22:42:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14778659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyasavestheday/pseuds/allyasavestheday
Summary: “You don’t have to pretend,” Cora says, and if it comes out a little more aggressively than she intends, she doesn’t care.Lydia pulls back, pen stilling. “What?”“You don’t have to pretend to like me just because we have to work on this project together.”“I’m not,” Lydia says. Her tone is neutral. She sniffs. “I don’t have an opinion of you either way.”Cora zeroes in on the uptick in her voice, the little tremor that gives away her lie. “Yeah, sure. I know girls like you.”_____Lydia Martin has never paid much attention to Cora Hale. That is, until Cora, rising star of the girls soccer team, quits days before regionals, killing any chance they had of winning state for the fifth season in a row, and becoming the most hated junior at Beacon Hills.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [candyvan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/candyvan/gifts).



> (alternatively titled: she's cheer captain and i'm on the LAX team)
> 
> for taylor @candyvan, without whom this would still be a very extensive timeline in my notebook titled "NaNoWriMo 2016"

Cora presses her forehead against the window of the idling car, fingers clenched in a tight fist. She didn’t think it possible, but the school looks even more depressing in the weak January light than it did when she last saw it before winter break.

“C’mon, it won’t be that bad,” Derek says. She drags her gaze away from the stream of students filling in the front doors to look at him.

All break he’s been uncharacteristically kind, like letting her pick what they watch on Netflix, or helping her figure out what to get Laura for Christmas when normally he’d just let her suffer. She knows he’s only doing it out of pity, and it should piss her off, but she can’t even muster up enough energy to care. That’s probably why he’s looking at her now with a horribly soft expression she wants to reach over and wipe off.

“Shut up,” she mutters instead, twisting the plasticky end of her backpack strap between her fingers tight enough it starts to cut off circulation, before releasing it again. The tips of her fingers throb a little in protest.

“It’s been a month—"

“Three and a half weeks.”

“Three and a half weeks,” Derek concedes. “No ones’ attention span is that long. It’s _high school_.”

Exactly. It’s high school. “Oh, how blissfully short your memory is,” she says, eyeing a group of girls excitedly greeting each other as if break hadn’t been two measly weeks of respite, as if they probably hadn’t met up for a New Years party someone inevitably threw. Cora would say she doesn’t know since she hadn’t been invited, but then, like all things recently, Cora does know and just doesn’t want to face the truth.

“Don’t be so dramatic.” She doesn’t have to face him to know he’s rolling his eyes, and there’s the Derek she knows and loves, impatience leaking into his voice. “No one gives a shit about other people in high school, they’re too obsessed with themselves and their own problems.” Cora looks back at Derek just in time to see him give her a judgmental once over. “Case in point.”

“Shut up,” she says again, for lack of a better retort. The clock on the dash ticks over another minute, and she knows she can’t put off going in much longer.

Besides, she can tell Derek is getting testy; he was kind of enough to drive her to school while he’s home from college so she didn’t have to face anyone on the bus, the least she can do is not wile away his early morning bemoaning her shit social situation. It’s not his fault she’s a fucking idiot who can’t keep her temper in check and doesn’t want to face the consequences of her actions.

She catches sight of a familiar varsity gym bag with a soccer ball bulging against the netting, and slides as far down in her seat as she can and still see out the window, heart pounding.

A vice tightens in her chest as she watches the gym bag (and the person carrying it) disappear into the school.

For a fleeting moment, she considers asking Derek to pull out of the parking lot and take her home. He’d do it too, grumbling the whole time, but he’d do it. He doesn’t even know what she’s avoiding, but he knows whatever it is has got to be bad if she’s willing to hide out in his car longer than she has to.

“You gonna be okay?” Derek asks, and his voice is soft again, and it’s that softness which steels her resolve.

Shoving herself upright, Cora grips her backpack strap. “I’ll be fine.”

She shoulders the door open, slamming it shut just as Derek calls after her, “Good luck!” Throwing a limp peace sign at him through the window, she turns to face the school.

Logically, she knows not every eye is on her as she heads to her locker. This isn’t some shit Hallmark movie where every face turns to look at her as she passes, whispers erupting in her wake. Logically, she knows this.

It doesn’t stop her from holding her breath every time she turns a corner, heart hammering against her rib cage in case someone from the soccer team is just around the corner. Her hands shake as she spins the lock, and it takes her three times before she gets the combination right.

She’s being ridiculous. It’s been nearly a month. Derek is right, no ones’ attention span is that long. It’s not like girl’s soccer is the biggest sport in Beacon Hills, barring only lacrosse. It’s not like the girls soccer team was set for an undefeated season or anything, set to win state for the fifth season in a row. It’s not like Cora Hale is now the determined scapegoat of that whole fiasco. And it’s _definitely_ not like they’re right.

Maybe since winter break everyone has chilled out, she tells herself, allowing a little glimmer of hope to nestle in the anxious roiling of her stomach. Chin up, she repeats Derek’s words and, clutching her chemistry book as a make-shift shield because she can’t truly bring herself to believe completely in that hope, she weaves her way towards first period.

Of course, she thinks perching herself on a stool and watching as her lab partner and former teammate Megan Larsen inches her own stool a good half foot away from Cora’s, maybe Derek is wrong, has always been wrong, and can eat shit.

Taking a deep breath, she faces front of the classroom. If she doesn’t acknowledge them, they can’t do anything to her.

Mr. Harris has written “Week 17, Unit 10: Gas Laws” and under that the assigned homework for the next week. Out of habit, Cora starts planning her study schedule around practice and training, before, well, remembering.

The bell is still ringing and Harris is standing in front of the class, already impatient and grimacing out a, “Welcome back. I expect your break left you adequately well rested to handle the final weeks of the semester, which I remind you, ends in two weeks.” Someone swears, but Cora disagrees. The sooner this semester is over, the better, if only so she can have a new lab partner.

“I’ll be collecting the first drafts of your final papers at the end of class,” he continues and Cora bites back a groan. She had been so wrapped up in her own misery, any and all thoughts of homework over break had gone completely out the window.“You’ll get them back by this coming Friday so you can reform your undoubtably weak theses for a second draft due next Friday. Any questions?” 

A hand in the periphery of Cora’s vision goes up. “No, Mr. Peterson, I will not be accepting late drafts without penalty. You had a week and half to do a simple seven page draft worth fifteen percent of your grade. You should have made time over your holidays.” The hand goes down, along with the last hope Cora had for this day being anything other than absolute shit.

“Any other questions? Miss Martin?”

Cora rolls her eyes. Lydia Martin is one of the girls on the varsity cheer team, and she’s always managed to rub Cora just that side of wrong. They run (ran) in the same circles, which tended to happen with the sports kids, but Cora has never made (nor truly wanted to make) an effort to get to know her. She’s dating _Jackson Whittemore_ for chrissake. Cora can hardly imagine she’s got much in common with someone who would date an entitled jackass like that.

“Yes, I had a question regarding the rubric. It says the page limits must be strictly adhered to—“

“No exceptions.”

“So if we exceed the ten page limit?”

At this, Cora turns around to look at Lydia, who has never struck Cora as an overachiever. Sure, when she’s called on she always has the right answer, but she never volunteers the answer. In fact, the few times Cora has actually spoken to Lydia outside of class, she’s always struck Cora as a bit ditzy, twirling her long red hair around a manicured finger the way she’s doing now and simpering to Jackson.

Certainly, she’s never thought of Lydia Martin as someone who would go out of her way to do more work than required. Maybe she needs extra credit.

As if she feels Cora’s gaze on her, or, more likely, she sees Cora moving in the corner of her eye, Lydia’s eyes flicker her way. Before Cora can look away, Lydia’s demeanor shifts just enough to be noticeable. Her prim posture slackens slightly, and her glossed bottom lip juts out in a pout. “Nevermind,” she says, and something in her voice has altered. It’s lighter, somehow. “I’ll talk to you after class.” 

Harris exhales through his nose, and looks around the class. “Any other questions? Good. Please direct your attention to the slides.”

Class passes all too slowly. Cora spends half the period trying to take notes, the other half trying to outline as much of her forgotten draft as possible. Maybe she can skip Pre-Calc and lunch to write it up and get it to him by the end of the day… She tries to weigh how many points would be taken off for lateness compared to the points she’d lose for doing a shit job and can’t decide which would be worse.

At the bell, she hangs back, gathering up her books in her arms. Lydia Martin is as well, but she looks at Cora expectantly, which Cora takes to mean she wants Cora to go first. Okay, fine.

“Uh, Mr. Harris?”

“Miss Hale,” Harris acknowledges, his back to her as he wipes down the whiteboard. “I notice you haven’t turned in your draft.”

“Yeah, I— I had some— I was—“ Super fucking depressed. Didn’t get out of bed all winter break. Didn’t give a shit about homework. But she’s not going to say any of those things and she knows he doesn’t care about excuses. Face burning, she nods. “No. I didn’t.”

“There’s a 10 point late deduction.”

She winces. It’s on the rubric, it’s not a surprise, but losing 10% right off the bat still sucks. She could still manage a 90% if it’s good. “That’s just for the draft, though, right?

“The draft is 25% of your final paper, but yes. It’s just for the draft.” He turns back to her, and his familiar blank stare is on her. Harris is everyone’s least favorite teacher, mostly because he’s generally a massive dick, but Cora can appreciate his unwavering adherence to his own rules. “Bring it tomorrow,” he says when she opens her mouth to ask about turning it in before eighth period. “Don’t waste your time on rushed drivel; neither you nor I want that.”

Cheeks still ablaze, she manages a whispered thanks, before dashing out of the classroom. She thinks it wouldn’t have been so bad if Lydia Martin hadn’t been there to witness it all.

Standing outside the classroom, she tries to shove her books in her bag as quickly as she can when she hears Harris’ response to whatever Lydia waited to ask him.

“Lydia,” he says, which is so _weird_ because Harris rarely uses anyone’s first name. “You have done exemplary work this year.” The words sound like they cause him physical pain to admit. “You don’t need the extra credit.”

“I know that,” Lydia sniffs primly. “But you mentioned before break these papers are going to be a deciding factor in our partners next semester. I don’t want to get stuck with someone who doesn’t understand basic chemistry.”

There’s a long pause, before finally, and Cora must strain to hear him say, “You won’t get partnered with someone who doesn’t understand basic chemistry.” His irritable tone is back. “I wouldn’t let anyone take this class if they weren’t adequately prepared for the course.”

Cora misses most of what Lydia says next because she’s fumbling with the zipper on her backpack but she does catch, “… can ensure my partner will actually do the work assigned to them?” _Bitch_ , she thinks, certain that jab is directed at Cora. Students for the next class are filing into the classroom, their voices drowning out the conversation.

“…. will be assigned by _me_ after reading and grading the papers, Miss Martin.” Cora smirks. Harris has few inflections in his tone but deeply irritated is one he has perfect.

The warning bell signals, and the halls are emptying. It’ll only take her a minute to get to her next class, she reasons, and her morbid curiosity gets the better of her. She’s never heard Lydia Martin string this many words together without punctuating them with a cold, girly laugh.

Also she’s fairly certain she was just insulted, so.

Cora almost thinks she’s missed whatever Lydia says next to the growing din of the classroom and the hall, but she hears, “Thank you for your time, Mr. Harris,” and has approximately three seconds before the click of Lydia’s heels bring her face to face with Cora, still hovering just outside the doorway, bringing her up short.

Lydia Martin isn’t particularly tall, but in the heels she wears daily, she just matches Cora. Up close and caught off guard, she is surprisingly normal, her stiff disinterested expression slipping for just a moment.

This is the closest Cora has ever been to Lydia. She’s entirely made up in a way Cora simply does not have the time or patience to do each morning, though the lip gloss on her bottom lip is almost gone, as though she’s been worrying it between her teeth for the last hour. Cora thinks it must take Lydia a long time in the morning to get ready, with all the hair and the make up, and almost feels a sort of grudging respect she feels towards anyone who puts that much time into their appearance. Her own is completely barefaced, her brown hair scraped back in a pony tale.

Under Lydia’s hard gaze, Cora feels distinctly inadequate, and Lydia’s words come back to her, and her face heats all over again.

“Excuse me,” Lydia says, punctuating the request with a surprised twitch of her brows that quickly turns arch with expectation. A spark of irritation flares in Cora’s chest at the presumption, and jerks her chin up.

“Sure,” Cora bites back, but doesn’t move. 

Green eyes narrow, and there’s a split second where Cora thinks she’s going to say something, but her expression cools into a more familiar sneer, and she tosses her hair over her shoulder before brushing past.

Cora watches her sashay down the hall for a long moment before the prolonged beep of the bell tells her she’s late for her next class. “God fucking—“

* * *

“Cora?” Her mom knocks twice on her door, opening when Cora gives a grunt of affirmation. Poking her head in, Talia Hale asks, “Why do you have five missing assignments?” She flicks the light on, flooding the room with light. “Why are you in the dark?”

Groaning, Cora drops an arm over her eyes to block out the light, phone falling to the side. “How do you know about that?”

“The school automatically emails when you have more than three.” Talia stands in her doorway, hands on her hips. “Which is three more than you should have.”

Avoiding her mother’s gaze, Cora rolls over so her face is smushed deeper into the pillow. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing, it’s five missing assignments.”

“I’m taking care of it,” Cora tells her pillow.

“It looks like you’re sleeping. At 5.30 in the evening.” Cora squeezes her eyes shut, like her eyelids have the power to stop this conversation before it gets any worse. There is a sharp edge to her mother’s voice, but underlying it is a concern Cora can’t stand to hear right now. It’s only made worse when the next thing Talia says is, “Do you want to talk ab—“

Letting out a garbled mix of groan and wordless yell, Cora rolls over, slamming her head into her pillow and shouting to the ceiling: “No, mom!”

“Hey,” Talia says cooly. “Don’t take that tone with me.”

Cora doesn’t say anything, just glowers up at the glow-in-the-dark stars she’s had above her bed since she was six. She reminds herself that it isn’t her mother’s fault that her whole life has gone to shit, and that she’s only trying to help. “Fine.” It comes out snottier than she means, but she doesn’t apologize.

She hears her mother take a long, deep breath through her nose before saying, “Dinner is in thirty. Get out of bed.” When Cora looks over, her mother is gone and her bedroom door has been deliberately left open. Kicking out of her covers, she crosses the room, stumbling over some clothes piled on the floor, and closes the door. Turning around, she immediately wants to turn the light back off as well.

With the light on, she’s forced to confront the pictures and posters and trophies and medals that adorn every inch of her bedroom walls and shelves. Ten years of soccer teams and tournaments, what feels like her entire life, are judging her from every angle.

She should take them down. A part of her feels like if she does that, she’s giving in, they’ve won. On the other hand…. haven’t they?

Between fourth period and lunch that morning, co-captains Olivia Blair and Harper Todd passed her in the hall and the looks they gave her had made her want to skip the last half of school all together, or start throwing punches, she wasn’t sure.

It solidified for her that there is no going back to that team, not anymore.

A couple times over break, while she was wallowing in her misery, she’d considered it. Surely they couldn’t blame her _entirely._ Soccer was, after all, a team sport. But Hannah Schneider had been out with a torn ACL which meant they were down their second-best fullback defender, and for Cora to just drop out the practice before the title game was the blow needed to knock Beacon Hills’ Varsity Girls team down to second place when they were favorites for defending champions. She knew it wasn’t all her fault, but at the same time, she couldn’t blame them for thinking that.

The part of Cora that wanted desperately back on the team, wanted to crawl back on her knees begging for forgiveness, is beaten down by the part of her that is still hurt, still furious.

The worst part is that she hadn’t been surprised. What Hannah had said; it wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t the first time there’d been a chorus of agreement. Her hands still tremble, with anger or anxiety she isn’t sure, when she remembers.

She was the only one who spoke up, and that is the worst part about the whole thing. She knows most of the girls on the team aren’t actually horrible people, she’s been friends with them for almost her entire life; she’s been their teammate through triumph and defeat. And yet, when it came down to it, when it came down to standing at her side, she was left free falling, alone.

It was only right, then, that she left them hanging when it mattered.

The picture above her bed is from last spring. They’d just won regionals, and Olivia and Chloe Strickland have their arms strung around Cora’s waist as they all smile huge, sweaty smiles at the camera; Maya Lester is photobombing in the background, throwing bunny ears up behind Chloe’s head, and they all look positively _delighted_.

Looking at the picture now opens up the ache she’s felt all morning, all winter break, and she has to swallow to quell the burning tears in her throat. Reaching out, she tugs the photograph from the wall, sticky tack leaving residue behind that she plucks at absently, looking down at the picture.

She can’t bring herself to throw it away. Instead, she sets it face down on her desk, before methodically moving across her wall, gently pulling down all the memorabilia that make her heart clench tight.

When she’s done, she’s got a modest stack of photographs and official team portraits, a ball of sticky tack, and near barren walls. She doesn’t know what to do with the trophies or the medals yet. Those are _hers_. They can’t take that away from her. But the team… the team is gone.

The little part of her that misses those girls, that treasures every second she spent with them, hurts to see the pile. That team was her whole life. Every waking moment was spent either training for soccer or prepping for soccer. She and Camille were going to camp this summer together, and she and Olivia had talked so much about playing for Stanford Cora is half convinced it is already a reality. Well, not anymore.

There’s a knock on her door, and Derek pokes his head in, “Hey, mom says dinner’s ready— woah, what happened to your pictures?” His eyes dart along the empty spots on her walls, where now only a Mia Hamm poster and a few family pictures are left. She hadn’t realized how much she’d had until now.

“Spring cleaning,” she says, swiping hard at her eye.

He opens his mouth to say something, but she cuts him off asking, “What’s for dinner? I’m starving.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos/comments/critique are greatly appreciated and keep me writing :) 
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [girlionceknew](http://girlionceknew.tumblr.com) and [g-taire](http://g-taire.tumblr.com). Come say hi!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented! I plan to update weekly :)

“God, that’s depressing,” Jackson says, though Lydia can tell from his tone he’s more amused than upset about whatever he’s pointing out.

She hums, not looking up from her chemistry marks. Harris has underlined some passages that he thinks could be stronger. She’ll have to expand on them in the final draft and see what he thinks. Though she knows Harris isn’t a popular teacher by anyone’s standards, she appreciates the brutal honesty in his feedback.

“What?” Danny asks next to her.

“That,” Jackson says.

Lydia looks up, a bit impatient, to see what he’s nodding towards.

It’s Cora Hale, awkwardly making her way through the lunchroom, eyes clearly darting around for any empty table. Normally, she’d be sitting with the soccer team, but Lydia guesses that ship has sailed. As she watches, Cora makes stilted movements towards a couple tables, before finally seeming to decide she’s had enough, and heading for the exit. Finstock is on lunchroom duty this hour, and clearly makes a show of trying to keep her from leaving without a hall pass, but Cora must say something because he lets her pass.

Lydia shrugs, turning back to her paper draft.

One of the boys on the lacrosse team, Marcus Peterson, leans in to say in a low voice, “Apparently she got kicked off the team because she’s a lesbian.”

Next to her, Danny stiffens defensively, and Lydia’s grip on her pen tightens. Looking up, she tilts her head to the side a bit, smiling coldly. “Didn’t she quit?”

“Yeah, dude,” Jackson says, and his eyes are narrow on Marcus now. “Besides, that’d be pretty shitty if she was.”

Marcus’ mouth drops open, and his eyes dart to Danny, and then between Jackson and Lydia. Perhaps he’s remembering Danny’s gay, or that Lydia’s grandmother has openly lived (much to the chagrin of many members of the town, including Lydia’s own father) with her partner since 1982, or that even Jackson has limits to what he’ll mock, and he quickly says, “No— yeah, obviously. It’s just what I heard. From someone.”

“Maybe pick better ‘someones’ to talk to,” Lydia sniffs. She spears a slice of cucumber, one of the few not wilted ingredients in her salad, and watches him watch her take a precise bite before before he colors a deep red and looks away.

Jackson and Danny have started talking about lacrosse again, even though the season doesn’t start up again until March. Nathen Pierce and a few others are contributing a bit, but mostly having their own conversations. Lydia catches about ten words of Nathen’s winter break snowboarding story for the fourth time this week and rolls her eyes. None of the other conversations interest her, and no one turns to ask her about her break; the lacrosse boys and their satellites are wholly absorbed in each other and themselves.

Taking another bite of her salad with only a mild grimace (cherry tomatoes, regardless of California’s year-round growing seasons or, more likely, hydroponic growing systems, are _summer_ fruits, and picking them in January only results in a bland, winey taste and a mealy texture) she turns her attention to her assignment.

She makes it to the third page before: “Why are you working on homework?” Jackson asks, and Lydia freezes, her pen hovering over the page of her notebook mid-note. She’s the only one at the table with papers in front of her; everyone else is taking the lunch hour for the break it’s designed to be.

Lydia tries never to work on work on schoolwork around Jackson or his friends — she’s fully aware he’s not dating her for her brains, and she’s happy to play her part as long as it benefits her — but she’d been so excited to read the feedback she slipped up.

“Uh,” she scrambles for an answer. “Harris.” She indicates the red markings all over the page she’s open to, surreptitiously folding over the 98/100 at the top corner. Harris doesn’t believe in perfect drafts, and, as much as it irks Lydia, she can respect that. “He’s been on my ass about my grades, and I just wanted to…” she trails off when she sees the blank look that has shuttered over Jackson’s expression.

Sometimes, Lydia considers dropping the act. It’s 2013, for fuck’s sake. But then Jackson makes an expression like _that_ whenever she tries to tell him about some new mathematic theory that’s been discovered, or that physicists at the Large Hadron Collider ended a _five decade long_ search when they discovered the Higgs boson last July, which is _incredible_ , and she decides it’s not worth it. 

Jackson is the favorite to be captain of the lacrosse team this season, and next year Lydia will be captain of the cheer squad. Prom court hasn’t been announced yet, but there’s almost no doubt in anyone’s mind (though Lydia, as always, has a niggling feeling in her sternum that won’t go away) that Lydia will be on it, if not voted queen, with Jackson as king.

They make sense in a cliched way, but it’s a way that works. Lydia knows the formula, and knows how to manipulate it to get the results she wants. There’s no need, no room, for her genius IQ in the mix, tampering with the findings.

Danny rescues her by drawing Jackson’s attention to a video on Ryan’s phone. It’s turned away from her, so she’s can’t see what’s happening, but Jackson is laughing, head thrown back, and Danny looks concerned.

“Oh my god, that’s great,” Jackson says. “Send that to me.”

Frowning at Jackson, Danny asks Ryan, “Does anyone know if she’s okay?”

“We woulda heard about it if she weren’t.”

The bell rings before Lydia can find out what is in the video, though she’s sure it’s another one of their stupid viral videos.

She follows Jackson and his friends into the hall, leaning against Jackson’s locker while he grabs his books, laughing at some lewd joke Nathen just made. “Hey,” she starts to say, when Nathen heads to class and it’s just the two of them.

“What’s up,” Jackson says, not looking at her, clearly trying to find an assignment. She can see the paper in question, tucked into the pages of the textbook he’s holding. She points to it and waits for him to notice. “Thanks babe,” he says, kissing her cheek, and walking towards his class.

Rolling her eyes, she follows. “I was thinking you could come over tonight, and we could watch a movie…” she trails off implicatively, running her fingers along his bicep.

Jackson shrugs and says, “Sorry babe, I’m hanging out with the guys tonight. Danny got the new GTA. You could come watch, if you want.”

Lydia blinks once at him, eyebrows raised, and says, “I’d rather drop into a coma.” Jackson snorts, but his lips are twisted up in his trademark smirk.

Tipping her head up to meet his kiss, she presses close to him. They’ve been dating over a year now, but she can’t help wanting to be close to him, feel his touch. It’s a bit pathetic, she tells herself, all things considered. They’re sixteen; it’s not like theirs is some fated romance. He’s dating her because she’s pretty and knows how to handle him. She’s dating him because he’s hot and knows how to handle her. It’s not exactly the pinnacle of romance, but, Lydia thinks, she might as well get everything she can out it, even if she has to pull it from Jackson like pulling teeth.

“Why don’t you hang out with Brooke and Nora tonight?” he suggests, and Lydia’s brows draw together, confused. She rarely hangs out with the girls on the cheer squad if they don’t have practice or a competition coming up. “You could do girl stuff together.”

Jackson doesn’t catch the look, because his own brows quirk like he’s waiting for a response, and she swallows her irritation to smile at him. “Yeah, girl stuff.” Pleased with himself, Jackson presses another kiss to Lydia’s lips and heads to class, leaving her in the middle of the hallway.

After lunch is Lydia’s study hall. It isn’t actually a study hall, rather, she’s set up an independent study with Morrell and Flemming in which she takes advanced math courses online through MIT. It’s the most Lydia’s been challenged in years, and it’s been the highlight of this year.

Sweeping into the library, she hands her ID to Mrs. Langdon, who knows by now that Lydia wants check out a laptop. She hates using the computer lab, especially when other classes come in.

As she’s waiting for Langdon to unplug the laptop from the cart and find the barcode, someone comes up next to her to check out their materials. Turning her head slightly, she sees it’s Cora Hale. She must have taken refuge in the library through lunch.

Lydia catches Cora glance at her before her gazes drops down at the book she’s holding.

Cora Hale has never particularly interested Lydia; sure, she was (emphasis on the past tense) one of the best soccer players Beacon Hills has seen in ages, but that comes with being a Hale. The Hales were notoriously good athletes. Her brother Derek was a senior when Lydia was a freshman, and she remembers him breaking half the individual school records in swimming that year alone. Her sister Laura did something, but Lydia can’t remember that one, it was a few years before they were in high school. Something about living in the middle of the woods must make for hearty children.

And Cora sits in the row ahead of Lydia in AP Chemistry, so it’s impossible not to have noticed her or talked to her every now and again. But, truly, the most interesting moment Lydia can summon from her memory regarding Cora Hale was that she once punched a senior lacrosse player at a party for groping her while she was dancing with the soccer girls. Everyone had laughed about it at the time, but Lydia remembers the look of abject fury on Cora’s face as she silently dared him to touch her again.

Nothing like the expression Cora wears now, eyes still downturned.

But Cora Hale has done little to set herself apart from her teammates, most of whom Lydia can barely distinguish from one another.

That is, until Cora quit the team days before regionals.

As far as Lydia knows, she never gave a reason, but that hasn’t stopped people from speculating. Everything from illness to deliberate sabotage have been thrown around, though Lydia can easily dismiss most of them with a roll of her eyes simply for being outrageous.

Whatever the reason, Lydia couldn’t care less. She quit the team. The team lost. No wonder she doesn’t have any friends. It was her choice.

Lydia’s thanking Langdon for the laptop and stepping to the side of the counter to organize her materials when two girls from the soccer team enter the library. She recognizes one of them as the captain, a tall senior brunette named Olivia Blair. The other is Megan Larsen, from their chemistry class.

As they pass Cora, she stiffens, and Lydia hears them say, “Fucking bitch,” just loud enough that everyone in their small circumference can hear it.Her brows shoot up, and she eyes the girls as they pass, but both of their attentions are on Cora.

Lydia sees Cora’s grip on her book go white, and her hand shakes as she hands it to Langdon to check out, but otherwise Cora’s face has gone stone still as if she hadn’t heard the girls. She doesn’t look at Lydia, or turn around to face either of the girls; her gaze is straight ahead, mouth a firm slash.

On the one hand, Lydia reasons as she cradles her laptop and books to her chest and turns to find a table in the upper floors of the library, it’s rather shitty (and classless, in her opinion) to so callously insult a former teammate and then _walk away_. On the other hand, Cora wasted an entire season of hard work to— what? Lydia didn’t even know.

By the time she’s found a table away from any other students, Cora is long gone, and Lydia’s attention has already returned to the differential equations that await her.

* * *

 Having phys ed as the last period of the day has its benefits — when she has cheer practice she is already changed and ready to go, and when she doesn’t, she still doesn’t have to worry about being sweaty the rest of day. She always brings her homework with her so she doesn’t have to go back to her locker, and can instead wait by the locker room exit for Jackson to drive her home. Lydia hasn’t taken the bus since freshman year, and it’s not an experience she wants to repeat. Her dad promised her a car for her sixteenth birthday, but he’s always been flaky on his promises; Lydia has learned never to take him at his word. With two months until her seventeenth birthday and no car in sight, she suspects she may be relying on Jackson for rides at least until lacrosse practices start up again.

She’s just leaving the girls locker room when she sees a clump of girls from the squad waiting near the doors. Jackson’s suggestion crosses her mind, andthen another, more distressing thought does as well, and she makes her way over to the group.

“Lydia! Hey!” Sophie Marks says as Lydia nears. “How was your break?” Ellie Miller and Leah Gonzalez, also juniors, smile at her approach, but she can see the tension in their faces when they look at her. Ignoring it, she focuses her attention on Savannah Lee, a senior and the current captain of the squad.

“Hey,” she says shortly, eyes flickering to acknowledge Sophie’s greeting, who blushes. “Did I miss something? Do we have practice today?” Lydia has never missed a practice since making the team sophomore year, and she isn’t about to start now, not when she wants to make captain next year. Extracurriculars are vital to a well rounded college application, and Lydia admits to not having given much effort outside of academics. Cheer gives her that. 

Savannah’s eyes widen, and she shakes her head. “No, not until Monday.”

Perhaps Lydia’s confusion is unfortunately still evident, because Sophie supplies, “We’re just waiting for Jae Eun to get here before we go.” Ellie tries to subtly elbow Sophie, but Lydia’s gaze catches on the movement.

Lydia’s eyes dart from one girl to the next, half the team waiting together, and quickly realizes her mistake. They weren’t waiting for practice to start, they were planning to spend their Friday night together. A strange suffocating feeling of unsurprised resignation clenches in her chest, and her words come out a little unsteadier than she wants. “Ah, never mind then.”

She turns to leave, when Brooke says, “Hey, Lydia, we were going to go to Maria’s and do some team bondi— each other’s nails and stuff, and if you wanted you—“ Lydia doesn’t miss the stuttered catch, and stiffens.

Lydia Martin does not get invited places as an afterthought. “I have to go,” she says loudly, cutting Brooke off. “I’m meeting my mother, we’re getting massages. Have a lovely time playing nail technicians, ladies.”

Baring her teeth in a tight smile, she tosses her hair over her shoulder and steps away.

She knows she isn’t as close with most of the squad as they are with each other. She doesn’t have _time._ She’s got homework, she’s got practice, she’s got Jackson. It’s not like she’s lacking for anything, in any sense of the word. Yet, somehow, it never crossed her mind that the squad would be organizing “bonding” nights, and that she wouldn’t be invited.

Sure, she’s been invited out with them a few times, has even gone — and been spectacularly bored. It doesn’t matter how cool and poised she is, if she doesn’t get their jokes, their fun ribs with each other that betrays a closeness she isn’t apart of, she isn’t going to enjoy herself. So why go?

It’s fine, she tells herself, jerking her chin up. She doesn’t need to be friends with them. She just needs to have their respect and their confidence to be a cohesive squad. As far as she’s aware, she has that. Who cares about the rest of it; not Lydia.

So why does it feel like her chest has been hollowed out and left suspiciously empty? It’s not the first time she’s felt it, like she’s missed a joke, been left behind. She shakes her head. It’s not productive to dwell, she tells herself. It doesn’t get her anywhere, it doesn’t help anything.

Sweeping down the hall, away from the gym door exit and her teammates, Lydia intercepts Jackson on his way towards her. She makes a show of deeply kissing him hello, which seems to please him, and she leads him towards a different exit, away from the squad.

When she gets home, she calls out for her mother, but finds the house empty. There’s a note on the counter, which has Lydia rolling her eyes because, really, who does that any more, that says Natalie would be home late. She squashes down her disappointment — she’d obviously lied to the squad, but on the way home, she’d thought about making an appointment for her and her mother anyway; it’s been a while since they’d spent much time together. Her father, she knows, is on a business trip in New York, which means she has the house to herself.

Any other night, she might have fired off a couple texts, invited way too many people over and lost herself in the music and the people.

Tonight, she finds herself heading up to her room, neatly setting out her homework for the weekend, stripping off her clothes, and crawling under the covers.

She wakes again at ten forty five to the sound of the garage door closing, and keys dropping into the dish by the mudroom door. Natalie knocks on her door, but when Lydia doesn’t answer, her retreating footsteps and the closing of the master bedroom door are the last sounds of the house.

Her stomach is tight with hunger, and it takes her a second to remember she slept through dinner. Rolling over, she grabs for her backpack on the floor, dragging it towards her bed. She always has some trail mix and protein bars for after practice, and picks most of the dried cranberries and m&ms out of the mix and eats three protein bars before she’s no longer hungry. She considers getting up, making some dinner with actually protein and vegetables, but finds herself unwilling and too fuzzy with sleep to care.

When she’s sure Natalie is asleep, she gets up, washes her face and brushes her teeth. She has seven snapchats from Jackson, all of them incomprehensible and about the video game. She’d half dreaded, half hoped she might have gotten some snaps from the team, but she didn’t.

Too wired to sleep now that’s she’s napped through three REM cycles and eaten more sugar than she should at this hour, she settles at her desk.

If she can knock out her stats and gov homework tonight, she can probably finish her Latin final essay tomorrow morning, leaving her Saturday night free to entertain, and Sunday she’ll do her AP Lit readings.All that left was her chemistry paper, but that was half finished anyway, and her independent study meeting with Flemming on Monday should go smoothly.

She takes a deep breath, pulling her hair into a tight bun away from her face, and opens her stats notebook.

She’s got it all figured out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos/comments/critique are greatly appreciated and keep me writing :) 
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [girlionceknew](http://girlionceknew.tumblr.com) and [g-taire](http://g-taire.tumblr.com). Come say hi!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to those who commented -- literally the only reason this gets updated is because people show appreciation (: 
> 
> cw: the middle of this chapter has a section in which a classmate says a homophobic comment to cora + school admins are useless shits

Cora is sprawled out across the living room couch, only half watching Michael Scott fuck up the Dunder Mifflin office per the usual, the other half of her attention scrolling through Facebook and trying desperately to ignore the nauseous feeling every time she passes a post from someone on the team.

Finally, the tenth or twentieth time it happens, she clicks the profile and unfriends them. Soon, she’s unfriended some twenty people, not all of them girls from the team, but really anyone whose face makes her want to cry or punch something.

Derek is in the lazy chair next to her, his own focus on his phone and neither of them look up when Talia enters from the kitchen.

“It’s a perfectly good Sunday afternoon, is this really what you’re going to do today?” Talia asks.

She lolls her head on the arm of the couch to meet Derek’s flickered glance, before looking to her mother. “Yeah.” On screen, Pam is talking to the camera but Cora’s missed most of the build up to the joke.

“I’m going grocery shopping, who wants to come help?”

“Not it,” Cora and Derek say at the same time. Derek’s finger flies to the tip of his nose before Cora can think to move her own. “Ugh,” she groans, flipping him off instead. Looking to her mother, she whines, “Do you really need someone to come?”

“I think it’d be good for you to get out of the house. And I need someone to help load groceries.” She holds up her perpetually carpel tunnel plagued wrist at them.

Derek snorts, and Cora gives another groan.

Talia raises her eyebrows. “Thank you, beloved children. I’ll keep this in mind when I write my will,” she says wryly.

She heads back into the kitchen, and Cora calls after her, “Does this mean I don’t have to come?”

“We’re leaving in fifteen,” Talia shouts back.

“I hate you,” Cora mutters to Derek as she rolls off the couch, but he just grins, shrugging his shoulders. On the TV, Dwight sets something on fire.

On the drive out of the preserve, Talia is suspiciously quiet, which leaves Cora both uneasy and relieved. Like all of the Hales, her mother isn’t particularly _talkative_ , but Cora can’t help assuming Talia has ulterior motives for making her come along.

Her eyes follow the familiar bends in the road, catching on the thin dusting of snow still lingering from the overnight fall. It isn’t rare to get snow this far north, even in California, but it still brings a sort of childish delight to see it. Come summer, she knows she’ll long for the mild winter days.

The preserve gives way to better kept campsite- and trail-lined roads, and finally, a country road. It won’t take long for them to be in town — Beacon Hills’ urban geography adapts like so many old cities which have seen sudden growth in the last thirty years,from mountainous forest in the east end into suburbs into industrialized downtown before vanishing back into the western forest that curls its way around the city like a cat.

“So,” Talia says eventually, when the quiet of the car has gotten to be too much and Cora reaches for the radio. She slumps back in her seat with a sigh, readying herself. “Soccer is going to be picking up again soon.”

When Cora quit the team, she avoided telling her parents why — which was rather bold of her, considering how much money they’d spent on soccer camps and cleats and the hours at games and practices they’d driven her to over the last ten years. She said she didn’t want to talk about it, and they’d accepted it, for the time being.

Her parents are good like that, giving her space when she needs it. She’s lucky she’s the baby, Laura always tells her. Mom and dad had enough practice that by the time they got to her, they knew how to handle teenage moodiness down pat.

But it’s been a month since she quit, and she’s been just as moody and withdrawn, and she knows she’s pushed her parents’ patience to the limit.

“Yep,” she says, glaring out the window. Soccer season is a perpetual thing, especially in California where the milder weather meant practices could start earlier in the winter. Spring season starts in a few weeks, and Cora’s gut twists to think that she won’t be out there, playing with her frien— former teammates.

“Are you planning to —“

“Nope.”

“Okay.” Talia flicks her blinker on to turn off the county road and in a matter of minutes they’re on a main thoroughfare. Cora wishes for the first time that the sprawl of Beacon Hills was condensed such that they’d already be at the store, where her mom wouldn’t try to talk to her about this. “Do you want to talk—“

“Mom!”

“Cora.” Talia’s voice is steady and firm, and Cora knows that tone. It’s the one she’s been waiting for since she told them she didn’t want to talk about it. It’s the one that says, ‘You’ve had your time, now as your parent, I need to know what’s going on.’ Cora hates that tone.

Keeping her eyes trained firmly on the passing storefronts, Cora says, “It’s really, really nothing.” Some of the stores still have Christmas trees up, but many of them are piled by the side of the road to be hauled away.

Talia snorts, and Cora risks a glance at her mother. Like her children, Talia has strong features — stern, dark brows, a proud Roman nose, a sharp jawline, and, most importantly, a mulish set to her firm mouth. Cora feels her own lips twisted in a mirror of her mother’s, and makes a face, trying to smooth them out to no avail.

“You know I don’t believe you when you say that,” Talia says.

Cora only barely stops herself from replying, “I don’t care.” Instead, she keeps silent, counting the stoplights until they turn into the Ray’s parking lot. For a small downtown like theirs, Beacon Hills has entirely too many lights.

“Your dad and I are worried about you, sweetie,” is possibly the worst thing her mother could say next. A horrible burning in her throat threatens tears, and Cora swallows hard against it. “We want to help you with whatever is going on, but you have to talk to us.”

Her voice a little hoarse, Cora says, “All my assignments are in, I’m not behind on anything.”

“That’s the least of our worries.”

They pull into the grocery store lot and Talia parks the car in a spot about as far away from the entrance as possible. She always does this, and it’s always driven Cora nuts. Now that Cora’s old enough to drive, however, she finds herself doing exactly the same thing. 

Talia doesn’t get out immediately, even though Cora unbuckles with a loud click and starts to open the door. Instead, her mother turns to face her, and waits until she looks at her. Sighing, Cora drops her hand from the handle, and faces her mother. The Hales are known for their stern features (“Just say ‘bitch face,’” Laura always says, rolling her eyes.) but now Talia’s face is soft and Cora hates it.

Her mother isn’t hard or cold or distant like so many people seem to think she is. She’s unwavering, sure, and sometimes that means she comes off standoffish or cool, especially when she has to argue with some of the other idiots on the city council. But she’s a good mom, and Cora resents the genuine worry she sees reflected in her mother’s eyes because she just wants to _mope_.

“Cora,” her mother starts, and it’s a different way of saying her name than before, but it’s another one that is layered with meaning. Cora’s eyes dart out the windshield, desperately trying to find something other than her mother’s hazel eyes to stare at. An employee is wrangling loose shopping carts, and she watches as one of the carts drifts away from them in comical slow motion before very narrowly missing a parked car. “We can’t help you if you don’t let us. We respect your privacy, but if you are in trouble, you have to let us help you.”

“Mom.” Cora’s eyes don’t leave the employee or long line of grocery carts they’re pushing into the store. “Can you trust me that I will tell you. Soon. I just…” She takes a deep breath.

She just what? There’s nothing to figure out. She’s had plenty of time to process, she knows she’s not going back to the team, and she knows exactly why. She just isn’t sure she wants _that_ to be the reason she tell her mom she’s — well. She’d rather it be under slightly positive circumstances, maybe. “I’m fine. I just need a little more time to myself and then I will tell you. I promise.” 

Talia hums, and when Cora finally tears her eyes away from the disappearing employee, she looks thoughtful. “Okay. Fine. But you need to work on this attitude of yours.” Cora scowls and Talia smiles, reaching forward to pinch her cheek. “I miss my lovely girl. Where is she under all those frowns?”

“Suffering. Terribly,” Cora says, finally getting out of the car. She hears her mother’s chuckle, and smiles for what feels like the first time in forever.

She’s always liked grocery shopping with her mom. Something about wandering around the produce and picking out crackers makes Cora feel like a kid again, tagging along because she has to not because she wants to, but in a good way. In a we-get-to-go-into-town adventure kind of way. Talia has a list, and is far more efficient when Cora isn’t with her adding chips to the cart or lingering by the pickled mushrooms for way too long, but Cora knows her mom likes the company. Even with her dad, Cora thinks Talia must get lonely, now that two-thirds of her kids have left the house, and Cora is so often not around.

“Oh I forgot the milk. Go grab that, would you?” Talia tells her as she makes her way towards the register.

As Cora’s turning away, someone hails her mother down with a loud, “Councilwoman!”

“Jesus. They know you have a name, right?” Cora mutters. Talia elbows her gently with a snort, pasting a wide smile on her face as she turns towards her constituent. Cora ducks away with a blithe smile at the person approaching, and goes to find the milk.

She’s staring into the refrigerated case of too many different varieties of alternative milk when she catches sight of Mrs. Larsen out of the corner of her eye, headed up the same isle Talia is currently in. The sick plummeting in her stomach triples when she sees Megan trailing after her mother.

Grabbing two plain, unsweetened almond milks, Cora follows after them, keeping a good fifteen feet between herself and the Larsens, hoping and praying neither turns around or stops to talk to Talia.

She prayers go decidedly unanswered. When the Larsens pass Talia, Talia turns briefly away from her constituent to smile at Mrs. Larsen. “Good morning, Georgia, Megan! How are you both?”

Mrs. Larsen barely slows down, and even twenty or so feet away, Cora can feel the chill in her smile. “Oh. Well, it _was_ a good morning, wasn’t it, Talia.”

“Jesus,” Cora breathes.

Talia’s eyebrows shoot up and draw together all at once, “Ookay,” she says to Mrs. Larsen’s departing back. Her eyes dart to Cora in askance, and Cora grimaces, and says nothing. “I’m sorry, Sharon, what were you saying?”

They talk for a few more minutes, before finally checking out and leaving. They’re loading cotton totes of groceries into the back when Talia asks, “What was that with Mrs. Larsen?”

“Possibly, like her daughter, she’s an absolute cu—“

“Cora!”

“— bitch?”

“That’s not better,” Talia says disapprovingly. She slams the hatch of the trunk closed. “Though it’s not wrong,” she finishes.

They’re halfway home when Talia asks, “Is Megan Larsen the reason you quit the team?”

Cora’s eyes follow the pines ahead of them. The afternoon sun is peeking through the clouds and much of the earlier snow is fully melting off. “Partially.”

Talia hums, but, true to her earlier agreement, doesn’t push the issue. Cora’s grateful.

* * *

She only has to make it another week and the semester is over. Somehow, she assumes that, despite her schedule (and therefore her classmates) not changing at all, next semester will be better. New seating arrangements. Fresh grade books. Something like that.

So of course, _of course_ , Wednesday morning is the day she fucking snaps.

Wednesdays are lab days in chemistry, which means, to Cora’s never-ending dismay, she must actually speak to Megan Larsen. Has to communicate. Discuss results and findings. Continue the lab tomorrow because, naturally, this isn’t a one day lab.

If Cora’s honest, chemistry isn’t her best subject. She took regular Chemistry sophomore year and did fine, but biology was really her thing, and she’d hoped to take AP Bio, but it didn’t fit in her schedule because she needs econ to graduate, and there was no way in hell she was going to take physics— AP, honors, or otherwise — which were the alternative science classes that fit in her schedule.

So now she’s stuck measuring out eight milliliters of stock solution of ironwhile Megan dicks around with the water and resin and in theory they’re going to figure out the empirical formula of a complex iron salt, but Megan isn’t very good at chemistry, and if Cora has to look at the equation one more time she might cry. It’s way too early to be dealing with that many superscripted numbers. It’s way too early to be dealing with Megan.

“‘Weigh out 12 grams of potassium oxalate monohydrate,” Megan reads from the worksheet. Dear god, they’re only on the second step. Cora glances behind them. Jeremy and Kevin seem to be doing okay; at least, they’re definetely past the second step, and Lydia and Arjun’s solution is already a vivid green, so they’re half done. Fuck. “Hello? Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Cora focuses on not spilling any of the powder on the scale, and double checks the instructions. “‘Dissolve with twenty milliliters of distilled water.’ Can you pass me the squeeze bottle? And that column?”

As soon as Cora is holding the delicate glass measuring instrument, Megan snaps, "Gross, don't touch me,” wrenching her hand away.

It takes Cora a split second to process the entirety of her exclamation. "What?" She hadn't even noticed their fingers brushing.

"I said," Megan says, her voice low enough that Cora is sure no one else can hear them, but deliberate and firm so Cora is unmistaken in her intent. She's leaning away from Cora, but somehow her face fills her entire field of vision. Loathing and disgust is etched into the very being that is Megan Larsen as she looks at Cora. "Don't touch me."

Her face heating, realizing Megan’s meaning, Coralooks away, looks to her lab report to double check the measurements. "I didn't mean to." Her ears burn, and she ducks her head down to focus on pouring out the right amount of water, but she can’t concentrate on anything but Megan’s voice and the surge of adrenaline pounding through her, making her hands shake. If she ignores her, if she doesn’t give her the power to hurt her, Megan has no power over her, she chants to herself.

"Sure, you didn’t.” Megan’s voice seems damningly loud, but no one else appears to hear her words. Cora sets the water bottle down, and checks the instructions again, but the words blur together, and she realizes with horror that tears have started to burn in her eyes. “I guess now that you can't perv on us in the locker-room, you'll take any chance you can get to grope a girl, won't you, you--"

The rushing in her ears is thunderous, and Cora doesn't think, her hands moving of their own accord, as she grabs Megan’s arm and wrenches her off her stool and shoves her to the floor.

For a split second, there is only silence. And then, screeching. "You absolute—“ Megan screams, clutching her shoulder, her face red and furious like Cora has never seen before.

Harris is yelling too, trying to make himself heard over the chorus of students.

Cora hears none of it, her hands clenched into fists, her breathing ragged. It’s like she can't get enough air into her lungs. Her chest is tight and getting tighter, and the only thing she can focus on is the dull pricks of her nails digging into her palms. At some point, she must have stood up because she’s towering over Megan still sprawled on the tile, but she doesn’t remember it.

She’s never actually punched anyone before, but she thinks she’d like to start now.

First, she thinks distantly, she has to figure out how to breathe.

“Miss Hale!” Harris’ voice finally breaks through the deafening thunder of her pulse, and she jerks away from the sound. She blinks, looking up.

The eyes of the entire classroom are on her, expressions of shock (and, on a few faces, hopeful delight), stare back at her.

“She’s psychotic!” Megan shrieks. Cora opens her mouth to defend herself but nothing comes out. “Did you see that, she shoved me—“

“Is something broken, Miss Larsen?” Harris asks.

Megan rolls her wrist and then her shoulder experimentally. “No.”

“Then be quiet.” Harris’ usually blank face has shaken into something outraged, his brows furrowed low beneath the rim of his glasses, his narrow mouth deeply set in a frown. “Miss Hale—“

“She—“ Cora stammered, gesturing to Megan, struggling desperately to find the words to explain, but Harris cuts her off.

“Office. Now.”

 More than hurt or anger, shame now spreads its hot, furious tendrils through her chest, and Cora kicks away her stool, grabs her book bag and lab paper and leaves the classroom as quickly as she can, eyes turned down and away.

Why did she do that, she berates herself as she exits the science building. Crisp January air kisses her cheeks, but nothing can cool the heat burning her cheeks, and she has to stop herself from darting down the middle of the quad, cutting through the parking lot, and walking home. Harris’ll have called the office by now and told them to expect her.

She’s never been sent to the office for disciplinary reasons before. She’s pretty sure Principal Thomas couldn’t pick her out from any other brown haired girl at Beacon Hills; she’s not the type of student to go out of her way to greet administration during passing periods, though she’s never been on _bad_ terms with any of them. Is she about to become one of _those_ students? The ones the administrative staff greet, but only as a reminder that they’ve got their eye on them.

It’s not like she actually hit her, or brawled or anything. Besides, what Megan said was way worse. She expects she’ll probably get detention, but if she can take Megan down with her, she wouldn’t mind so much.

Scrubbing the palm of hand against her eyes, she wipes away any last traces of tears before pushing open the door to the front office. Mrs. Kennedy the secretary looks up when she enters, and the magenta line of her lips curls down when she sees Cora. “Ah. Cora? Mr. Harris said you’d be down.”

“Yeah,” Cora says, and has to clear her throat. “I—“ She actually doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do. She assumes she’s supposed to meet with Thomas, but what if he’s not in?

“Yes, I know. Take a seat. Mr. Thomas will see you when he’s finished his call.” She points to some chairs lined along the hall, within her eyesight, and just outside the guidance and administrative offices.

Cora does, sinking low into the seat. A senior comes to sign in for second period, and she slouches further, hoping they don’t look over at her. It’s another twenty minutes before Thomas’ office door opens, and the tall, blond man looks down at her. “Cora Hale?” She nods, quickly shoving her phone in her bag. “Hale? As in—“

“Yes,” she says, before he can start listing every member of her family who has either done extraordinary things for the school or the town, or whatever else. She gets it; her family is a pillar of the Beacon Hills community and she is a blight on that, or whatever. Or, is about to be, anyway, if the last few weeks of school are anything to go by.

“I hear you were an excellent defender on the girls’ soccer team,” Thomas says, stepping back. Cora takes this as her cue to enter his office. He leaves the door ajar, and Cora isn’t sure if that’s preferable to having it closed. Closed at least means her humiliation is relegated to just within the walls of his office. There’s no need for Mrs. Kennedy to hear her blubber on about how mean Megan Larsen is.

“Uhh, thanks.” The past tense is obvious.

Settling in at his desk, Thomas gestures to her. “Now. What seems to be the issue.”

“Uhh,” Cora repeats, glancing between him and literally anywhere else. He’s got a Kobe Bryant bobble head next to his pen cup and every time Thomas moves, Kobe’s head nods gently at her. “Well, I guess. I — there was an incident.” How does she phrase it without completely incriminating herself.

Pale eyebrows shoot up, and Thomas says, “An incident?’

“I was in AP Chem, with Harris, and we were in the middle of lab—“

“You pushed Megan Larsen off her stool,” Thomas says impatiently.

“Well—“ she starts, face heating up all over again.

“Why did you push Megan Larsen off her stool?”

She realizes that Thomas isn’t particularly interested in the complete story, he just wants her to get to the point. Fine. “Because she was saying homophobic shit to me!” Cora snaps.

If his eyebrows weren’t already raised as far as they can go, Cora suspects they might have disappeared into his hairline. Instead, Thomas pushes his wire rim glasses up his nose, and doesn’t saying anything for a long moment. “Well.” He clears his throat. “Do you have, hmmm. Do you have any witnesses to her… comments?”

“I don’t know— no, I mean, we were alone at our lab, she wasn’t exactly shouting hate speech for everyone—“

“Hey, let’s not go throwing terms—”

“Accurate terms?” Cora shoots back. Thenails of her right hand are digging into the back of her left, but she doesn’t stop staring him down. She can’t believe this, and yet, somehow, at the exact same time, is completely resigned to this exact outcome: nothing.

“Terms which are unprovable, and frankly, damaging to her character,” Thomas says.

Cora had expected she might cry while talking to him about this, even if the tears were more furious than hurt,but all she feels is hollow disgust. “So you think I’m making this up? You think I shoved Megan off her stool for no reason?”

“I’m not saying that, but perhaps you have other problems which you blame Megan for. She is, after all on your team—“

“The team I fucking _quit_ because of the same homophobic shit, Jesus Christ!” Cora cries.

“Language!” Thomas says, sharply, pushing away from his desk and standing, an angry blush making its way across his cheeks. Kobe’s head is bobbling rapidly now. “Cora, physical violence will not be tolerated—“

“Oh, but bullying is fine?”

“— you will serve detention during your lunch period today and tomorrow." He has to raise his voice to speak over her, but she gets a dull pleasure in seeing the redness has reached the back of his neck. “I’ll be calling your parents to inform them what happened and if you are caught fighting again, you’ll be suspended.”

Cora stands as well, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Great,” she bites out. “Are we done?”

He barely affirms her question before she’s out the door. Her dramatic exit is abruptly halted when she remembers she has to get a late pass from Mrs. Kennedy. As she’s waiting for the secretary to fill out the slip, the angry tears she’d numbed out during her argument with Thomas surface, and she has to turn quickly away before anyone can see her face screw up. 

The day passes in a blur. Cora isn’t even sure what they covered in any of her classes. The only moment she firmly remembers is hesitating outside the classroom she knows lunch detentions are held in, holding her breath for one, long moment, before rounding the corner. Two other students are eating their lunch, and the presiding teacher glances up at her before gesturing to take one of twenty three open seats. No one says anything, and she still feels the humiliation of the whole situation, but, on the other hand, she doesn’t have to deal with the lunch room (or trying to escape it). Win, lose.

Her parents are the worst part. It’s their disappointment, really, that ties the bow on the shit present that is her life.

She’s up in her room when the curt rap on her door comes, seconds before opening. Talia fills the doorway, and her expression is stony. “Do you want to explain to me why I got a call at work from Principal Thomas about you fighting at school?” Her father is standing just behind, his arms crossed over his chest his expression just as unwavering, and Cora curses being born into a family of lawyers.

She doesn’t bother to hesitate or lie. She knew this was coming. “Because I shoved Megan Larsen off her stool in AP Chem this morning.” Her ears burn, but she jerks her chin up defiantly.

Talia’s mouth drops open, and Alonso’s eyebrows shoot up. Maybe they hadn’t expected her side of the story to actually put her at (partial!) fault. “ _Mija_ , why?” Alonso asks. “What could possibly incite you to violence?”

Now is the perfect opportunity to tell them. Tell them everything: why she quit the team, what’s been ‘going on with her,’ why she has a passionate desire to punch Megan Larsen (and others) in the face.

But it’s not _fair_.

She wants to tell them on her terms. She doesn’t want to come out to them because of something horrible happening, how is that supposed to instill confidence in them that in coming out, she’ll be safe in the outside world?

When she’s thought about coming out to them, she’s played through a million and a half scenarios.

They’d be okay with it. She knows this. Her parents are some of the best people she knows. So their refusal of her, or disowning her, has only flickered once in her mind before she promptly pushed it away.

So it’s always good, when she does. Sometimes it’s casual, like she mentions how cute a girl is, or that she’d maybe like to take her to prom, and that’d be that. No fuss. Sometimes she sits them down at the kitchen table and tells them. Sometimes it just bursts out of her, something like “girls are so pretty, I love girls,” one night while they’re watching a movie. She’s played through them all again and again. Her favorite is the one where she tells them about her girlfriend, tells them how happy she is, smiling so hard her face feels like it’ll break in half.

None of them ever included bullying classmates and detentions and tears.

She wants to be happy when she tells them. It’s a _good thing_. She’s not ashamed of it.

Scraping the cap end of her pen in a jagged swirl across the knee of her pajama pants, she refuses to meet their eyes. “She was saying shit and pissing me off.”

“So you _hurt_ her?”

“She—“ Cora sighs, frustrated. “Provoked me!”

“Violence is _never_ okay, Cora. _Never_ ,” Talia says. “Don’t give her that power, to provoke a reaction out of you. What’s gotten into you? This isn’t like you at all.” 

If she told them, she’d probably get out of trouble. Why is it easier to shout the truth to a Principal who doesn’t care and not her parents? “I’m sorry,” she mumbles instead to her pajamas.  

“I’m not sure that cuts it,” Alonso says. “Have you apologized to Megan?”

She looks up sharply, expression mulish. “I’m not going to.”

“Cora—“

“I won’t apologize to that bitch, she can rot in fucking hell, I don’t care, you can ground me, whatever, but I won’t.” Tears prick her eyes, but she’s so tired of crying over Megan fucking Larsen, she wills herself not to break eye contact with her father.

Alonso grimaces. “Well, you’re definetely grounded. The weekend, at least.” Cora doesn’t mention she has neither friends nor plans, because, well. He doesn’t need to know that. “This is completely unacceptable behavior, Cora. You have to know this.”

“She deserved it. She deserved worse.”

Something in her tone must strike a chord with them, because Cora registers her mistake as soon as she sees their expressions falter. “Is she being mean to you?” Talia asks.

And — fuck — _fuck_ those tears. Cora is so fucking sick of crying. She throws her pen down hard, and it goes clattering across her desk. “She’s just a bitch!” she cries. “Why can’t that be enough of a reason to want to punch her?”

“Because violence is not tolerated in this family,” Talia says, and her tone has cooled considerably. “And if you keep this up, you’re going to be a lot more than grounded.”

“Fine.”

 As soon as her parents leave, Cora wraps her arms around her legs, and presses her forehead hard against knee, feeling the soft fabric of her pajamas rub her skin raw as she shakes. There are no tears. She’s cried herself out, but her body doesn’t seem to know that, silent sobs wracking through her enough her sternum begins to ache with the force of her hurt.

* * *

 

Thursday morning dawns gray and cool, and Cora considers, for the umpteenth time, skipping. But she’s in enough trouble as it is, and she’s not going to make things worse.

Derek drops her off again, and he’s being nice even though she’s in deep enough shit with her parents that Talia barely spoke to her this morning over breakfast. Late last night while she was brushing her teeth, she’d heard her parents quietly discussing her as they got ready for bed and it’d been too much for her. “Hey,” he says as she’s getting out. “I’ll beat them up for you. They can’t suspend me.”

She gives him a watery smile. “No, they’d just arrest you for aggravated assault.”

He shrugs, giving her a wolfish grin. “They’d have to catch me first.”

When she enters AP Chemistry, she’s not totally sure what to expect. She’s obviously not going to be allowed to sit next to Megan.

But the dilemma is solved for her when she sees Megan has crammed herself as a third wheel on Kelly and Hannah’s table. She sneers at Cora as she enters, but Cora jerks her head up and refuses to look at her.

“Okay, we’re just continuing the green crystal lab today. So you can get to your beakers out of the hood and get to work,” Harris says before the bell has even rung.

“Uh,” Cora raises her hand. She never got to the point of crystals yesterday.

“Ah, yes. Miss Hale. Miss Larsen has found herself another group to work with, I suggest you do the same. I don’t relish the idea of staying after school so you can complete the lab yourself. Find a partner, we haven’t all period.”

Find a partner is probably the cruelest punishment anyone could have inflicted on her. Hunching down over her paper, she tries to figure out how much of the lab she’s missed, and if it would really be that hard to speed her way through what’s left. But no, she needed to leave the solution to dry overnight. Of course.

“Cora,” a soft voice says behind her, and she stiffens, but doesn’t turn. “Cora,” the voice repeats, louder.

Taking a deep breath, Cora fixes her expression as carefully blank as she can. It’s Erica Reyes, leaning forward across her desk. Her thick blonde hair is pulled back in a frizzy ponytail, and she looks half ready to climb back into bed in an overlarge sweater. A thin hand pokes out of the sleeve, clutching a pencil. “What?” she asks.

Erica looks at the boy next to her, Vernon Boyd, and shrugs. “You could partner with us.”

Cora narrows her eyes at the pair. Part of her is screaming that it’s some sort of trap. The other part of her is rolling its eyes and reminding her for the umpteenth time that her life isn’t a shitty MTV movie and people don’t do that in real life. Besides, Erica Reyes is probably the least intimidating person Cora knows. “Oh. Really?” she asks tentatively.

“Yeah, c’mon.” Erica scoots her stool over with a loud screech. She elbows Vernon gentle. “Move, she’s gotta get in here.”

For the first time in a long time, AP Chemistry passes quickly and painlessly. Erica and Boyd — “Boyd,” he corrects her the first time she uses his name and she realizes it’s possibly the first time she’s ever heard him speak — are actually really good at chemistry, and Erica manages to explain the equation to solve for solubility in a way that Cora understands.

“Come sit with us at lunch,” Erica says as they leave.

“What?”

“You’ve got fourth hour lunch, right?” Erica asks.

“Yeah.”

She smiles, and it’s big and sweet. “Great. We’re in the corner by the custodial closet.”

Cora agrees before she even really processes the whole of it. Erica Reyes and Vernon Boyd are inviting her to sit with them at lunch.

She has someone to sit with at lunch.

A strange lightness takes hold in her chest, and carries her through the next two hours with an ease she’d forgotten she could feel. Come lunch time, she’s starving and the feeling has worn off a little, replaced instead with an awkwardness. She barely knows these people, yet she’s been their classmate for how many years? She’s ashamed to admit the only thing she knows about Erica is her seizures.

“Hey Cora!” Erica says brightly when she cautiously approaches the table in the corner by the custodial closet. “This is Isaac Lahey by the way,” she says, pointing to a towheaded boy sitting across from Boyd.

“Yeah, I know,” Cora says, a bit bemused, taking the empty seat next to Erica. “We’ve had classes together.” Their school only had fifteen hundred students, she’s known most of the kids in her class since kindergarten.

“Ah,” Isaac Lahey says, and he’s got a wry way of speaking that somehow conveys a sort of self conscious smugness.“Well, you never know, having fallen this far, what people know about those of us here at the bottom of the social pyramid.” Cora cocks an eyebrow, only just stopping herself from twisting her lips into a frown. She’s never prescribed to the stereotypical ideas of popularity in high school, finding them to be rather worthless. Though, she supposes, here she is, so maybe there is some truth to it.

“Welcome to the Isle of Misfit Toys,” Erica says with a gesture. Two freshmen with smudged eyeliner looked over, their heads bent together in discussion, before turning back to whatever is on their phones.

“We can hardly claim the whole island,” Boyd says diplomatically. “Scott and Stiles own at least part of it. Plus I’m sure there are bigger losers than us that even we don’t know about.”

“As long as we get the beachfront, I’m fine sharing,” Erica replies with a shrug. She knocks her shoulder against Cora’s when she laughs, and Cora thinks that things might not be so bad after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear lydia and cora will interact soon. ~~i did tag this as slow burn.~~
> 
> Kudos/comments/critique are greatly appreciated :) 
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [girlionceknew](http://girlionceknew.tumblr.com) and [g-taire](http://g-taire.tumblr.com).


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i apologize for the delay in posting. my boss doesn't understand how make a schedule nor does he understand the words "day off." in my defense, this chapter is 7,5k which is more than half the rest of the fic so far.
> 
> thank you thank you so much to everyone who commented -- i'm very serious when I say that comments on new chapters are the only reason I (and other writers) keep writing. without them we have no idea if we're just screaming into a void, or if someone is actually listening. ESPECIALLY because wips so rarely get read or feedback and we are doing a lot of labor for free. 
> 
> so thank you <3 you ARE the reason this got updated (see endnotes for more)

Lydia’s whole body aches, and there is definetely something wrong with her knee, but she pushes through it, her mind blanked out of anything and everything except the routine. The music flows through her, running in her veins as she moves in tandem with the beat, with her team. As she falls into time with Ellie and Sophie to complete their synchronized aerials, she keeps half her attention on the bases setting up to send Maria and Jae Eun flying.

This routine has been tough for them to nail all season, and it’s almost entirely down to the set up of the final basket-tosses. They simply aren’t in time. She sticks her handless cartwheel with a slight wobble, her knee protesting, seconds before the girls are fully in the air, and knows without looking that she’ll finish her second before they’re set up for the pyramid. “Red and white,” Lydia shouts while the music fades out, stepping forward, while behind her, the girls balancing on the bases call the cheer from the top. “Fight, Cyclones, fight!”

Breathless, Lydia holds her final position, arms outstretched and decidedly not trembling.

“Two forty,” Coach Park calls out to them. Lydia groans, clutching one hand to her side. They are ten seconds over time. Ideally, they’d be ten or so seconds _under_ to give them some leeway. They’ve been penalized twice this season, and Lydia hopes that it’s just the stress of finals that has the team out of sorts. At this point in the season, timing shouldn’t be the issue anymore.

Coach Park twists around to look at the gym clock. “Okay, girls, we’ve got a few minutes, let’s go over final critiques and then you can head home.”

“Shouldn’t we run it one more time?” Lydia asks. There’s a chorus of moaned disagreement, but she’s looking at Coach. “Timing has been a real issue this week, we need to nail it.”

Coach shakes her head. “You girls have had a really good week, and need to rest up. Final exams are tomorrow and I want you focusing on those.” The team sits in a semi circle around her as she gives final points, paying special attention to their last competition’s scores. Their next meet is in two weeks, which gives them plenty of time to improve their routines and times, but Lydia thinks they should be past that by now. 

“So — Ice tonight, plenty of protein and water, and we’ll meet back on Monday. Take the weekend to recover from finals, and keep up with your stretches.”

The locker room is a riot of slamming metal and girls shoving clothes into backpacks. Lydia’s only half glad they’ve been released a bit early — she has her Latin exam tomorrow, as well as having her AP Lit and AP Chem papers due, and while she’s been reviewing and meticulously planning and drafting multiple versions of her papers, she still feels as though she’s missing something. Racking her brains, she packs of up her heels and day clothes, mostly tuning out her teammates as they bemoan finals stress.

She is swiping a makeup wipe across the sweat dried skin of her face, the cool, chemical cucumber scented cotton soothing her still hot cheeks, when she catches, “— and I mean, it’s _Megan_ so, take that how you will.”

“Well, she did punch Megan, didn’t she?”

“She pushed her off her stool, Megan was barely bruised,” Lydia interrupts. When they look at her, she shrugs. “I’m in their chem class.”

“Why?” Maggie asks.

Tossing her make up bag into her duffle, Lydia raises her brow. “Why am I in their chem class?” she asks, deliberately obtuse.

Rolling her eyes, Maggie says, “Obviously: why did Cora Hale push Megan off her stool?”

Lydia shrugs. “I don’t know. We were in the middle of lab; they were lab partners.”

“Megan says Cora was hitting on her and got mad when she rejected her,” Skylar says in a low voice. She pinks immediately after, and seems to regret speaking, quickly returning to braiding her hair.

Scoffing, Lydia focuses on brushing her hair out. Her dad won’t be picking her up for a few more minutes, she can stand to stall in the locker room with the other girls for once. “I doubt it. They sit in front of me and never speak. They seem to mutually hate each other.” Hate didn’t truly seem to be a strong enough word. Lydia has paid little attention to their interactions but even she can see the tension there, and Lydia didn’t think it’s the sort of tension that arises out of mutual or even non mutual attraction.

The squad has dissolved into too many conflicting conversations that Lydia isn’t able to follow all the threads, picking out the loudest conversation and zeroing in on that one.

“They’re both on the soccer team though,” Brooke says with a shrug.

“So?” Sandra asks.

“I’m just saying, maybe she _did_ hit on Megan at some point, and that’s why Megan hates her.”

“Kinda a shitty reason to hate her.” There’s a round of agreeing noises.

“I mean, if Megan’s not gay and doesn’t want her to…”

“Do you know how many guys have hit on me that I don’t want to? I don’t hate them unless they’re being assholes,” Ivy says.

"Cora’s always been nice to me,” someone adds.

“Yeah, but has she _hit_ on you?”

“No.”

“So you don’t _know_ whether it’d bother you—“

Lydia’s ears are ringing, her fingers frozen half way through her braid. Each time she thinks she’s going to interrupt, make a cutting remark, someone else butts in and drives the conversation farther. She untangles her fingers and starts the plait again, breathing slowly and carefully through her nose, focusing on the smooth strands of hair under her fingertips.

“Wait— so did she actually get kicked off the soccer team because she’s gay?”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“She hasn’t said she’s gay, Megan’s just being an asshole.”

“Megan’s really nice, what are you talking about—“

“Well, if Cora _is,_ you know, well,” Sarah starts, makes a face, and manages: “ _You know….“_

 _“_ Gay?” Lydia snaps. She wrenches the zipper on her tote closed, rougher than she should; it’s a Hartmann. “Bisexual? A lesbian? They’re not dirty words, you don’t have to beat about them.”

Sarah flushes an angry red, opening her mouth to shoot back but she doesn’t get the chance.

“Hey!” captain of the squad, Savannah Lee, shouts. Everyone quiets. “It doesn’t matter whether Cora Hale is gay or not, _or_ why she quit the soccer team. If she is gay, that’s her business, not yours.” She looks around at the remaining squad members. “I don’t need to remind you that this team has a strict no bullying policy that extends to people off the squad. Be considerate, and, Christ, think before you speak. You have no idea if someone in this locker-room is gay, and if your words are telling them that you or this team is against them.”

“But—“

“Sarah, the next words out of your mouth better fucking be, ‘But, of course, Savannah, no one on this squad would ever dare bully any other person for their sexuality.’ If not, zip it.”

Sarah scowls, and slams her locker closed, stalking off without another word. An awkward silence falls, and a few freshmen duck out, even though some upperclassmen still linger.

“Lydia, you mentioned a party this weekend?” Nora says, loudly.

 _When_ , Lydia thinks, then remembers — she always throws the end of semester bash. Or, has since sophomore year. Last week she’d mentioned holding it at her grandmother’s lake house, but hadn’t had time to ask her parents yet. She’s been so caught up in final exams and papers, it completely slipped her mind. “Of course,” she says, with a laugh. “Who else would?”

“Usual place?” Nora asks. Lydia flushes, a little delighted that her parties are known enough to have a ‘usual’ place besides her parents’ back terrace. The pool and fire pit are awesome, but her grandmother’s lake house has twice the room, no potential parental supervision, and the _lake_. If nothing else, since it’s still too cold to swim, it makes for some excellent instagram pictures, and bonfires on the sand.

Cooly, pulling out her phone, she creates a reminder to talk to her parents about the party. She won’t forget, not now that Nora’s brought it up in front of everyone, and there is a semi circle of excited faces tuned towards her, but just in case. She did, after all, almost forget already. “I’ll send out a text Thursday night with all the details.”

Nora grins. “Awesome!” Lydia finds herself smiling back, genuinely, and for a moment, she can picture inviting them over for— what, manicures? A movie night?

Her phone buzzes, breaking the half moment of fancy, and she glances down at the screen. It’s a text from her dad, a single word: ‘Waiting.’ “Gotta go,” she says, slinging her bag over her shoulder. A few girls say goodbye, others following her out.

She’s almost to the back pool doors when Savannah calls after her. “Hey Lydia!” Lydia stops, and turns, brows raised as Savannah jogs to catch up with her. “Hey! Sorry if anything, y’know, touched a nerve back there.”

“What?” She knows she snapped at Sarah, but she doesn’t think she’s ever given anyone a reason to think she’s personally affected by homophobic language.

Lydia hasn’t told anyone yet that she thinks she’s bisexual (she’s almost certain; she’s experimented _theoretically_ but she doesn’t have any… _tangible proof_. Lydia hasn’t decided what factors go into proving her hypothesis yet, which means the entire conclusion is technically invalid, but somehow she thinks her sexuality isn’t exactly something she can empirically document. Probably.).

It’s not that it’s something she’s ashamed of— growing up with a bisexual grandmother and her lesbian wife fairly prominently in her life instilled a pretty safe and positive understanding of sexuality at a young age— it’s just that she doesn’t think she wants to be out to her classmates. She’s seen how people treat Cora Hale, and others like her.

Besides, she’s dating Jackson. She knows that dating a guy makes her no less bisexual ( _obviously_ , it’s in the _name_ ) but there’s still that niggling feeling of somehow if she were to come out, the expectation is that either she’s really straight or she’s really gay, and she’ll have to decide. But Lydia’s given this a lot of thought; she knows she likes multiple genders. It’s not her fault the rest of society refuses to understand that, let alone a small town high school, even if that high school is located in California. California has a liberal reputation, but outside the populations concentrated on the coast, the state is surprisingly conservative, and Beacon Hills is located in one of the most conservative counties.

So, it’s easier to just not come out in high school. Maybe once she’s graduated, left this town. But until then, _the prom queen isn’t queer._ The prom queen dates the quarterback— or, in this case, lacrosse star. So, why would Savannah think —?

“You know, because your grandma is…” Savannah squints, seems to be trying to pick a label, before settling on, “married to another woman.”

“Oh!” Lydia says, relaxing. She shrugs. “It comes with the territory.”

“Well, it shouldn’t have to.”

“What should and what is are two very different things,” Lydia says cooly, and then softens. “But thanks, and uh, thanks, for what you said. To Sarah. ”

Savannah smiles widely, and tucks a long strand of black hair behind her ear. “Thanks. I figured it was past time to end that whole potential mess. I mean, they mean well, y’know? I know a lot of them probably have only seen gay people on _Glee_ , so they might not really get it but… still. It’s a learning experience.”

Shifting the strap digging into her shoulder, for one half second Lydia considers telling Savannah she’s bi, that it means a lot to her that Savannah shut Sarah down before she could even get started.

Savannah has always been a good leader; Lydia’s never once questioned her authority, or her position, even though Lydia wants it for herself. Maybe she could give Lydia some advice. Leading the girls seems to be second nature to her. She gets along well with them, _and_ commands their respect. “Right.”

“Anyway!” Savannah says. “I should let you go. But, you know, some of the team is comping over to mine around seven to study… we’ll have pizza and stuff, and if you need help with anything — you have AP Gov with Kelly right? — we can help…”

Surprised, Lydia’s brows shoot up. “Oh!” She quickly reviews the list of things she needs to do tonight, the one that is constantly rotating at the back of her mind, and knows, with a twinge of disappointment she’ll have to say no. The problem with saying no to plans, though, is that one never knows when (or if) someone will offer again after being rejected. “I can’t, I’m sorry. I have paper due tomorrow.”

“Bummer. I think they’d have really liked to have you there,” Savannah says, and Lydia is torn between a smug _well, obviously_ and a doubtful ‘ _they’ who?_

She settles on a shrug instead. “Yeah, sorry. I gotta go. My dad’s waiting.” Savannah waves her goodbye.

Ducking into her father’s idling BWM, she’s barely said hello and pulled the door closed and he’s pulling away from the curb, saying, “I don’t appreciate having to wait so long after your practices.”

Lydia glances at the clock, reading 5.02pm, and rolls her eyes. “Coach kept us late,” she lies. “We’ve got a competition next weekend and —“

“One second,” he interrupts and taps a bluetooth at his ear. “Yeah, what? Are you _kidding me_? No, absolutely not, take the offer off the table. No, I’m not joking.”

Her father works as a project manager at a development firm, and their latest has been hitting roadblocks at every turn from conservationists and local government alike.

It’s all Lydia has heard about for the last three weeks, when her father is home, that is. Trying to get a word in edgewise is impossible.

She tries to tune him out, though his voice rises in volume the longer the conversation goes on. The moment they pull into the driveway, and wait for the garage door to open, she gets out of the car. Her father is still going off on his poor assistant.

Dinner is delayed until Natalie finally has enough, slamming the salad bowl on the table hard enough that the water in Lydia’s glass ripples. “Thanks,” she says as her mother passes her the metal spatula and the chicken. “How was work?”

Natalie sighs deeply, and shakes her head, says, “It was work,” and doesn’t elaborate. Lydia’s mother studied chemistry in college, and might have gone on to graduate school and earned her PhD, but when she got married she put those plans on hold. Now, she works in accounting of all things — the pay is fine, but Lydia knows the work bores Natalie to death, and office politics drive her mad.

“Can I have the team out at the lake house this weekend?” Lydia asks after they’ve fallen into a lull. She always frames it that way: just the team. She doesn’t think her parents would appreciate her inviting a significant percentage of the student body to party at her grandmother’s lake house.

“What’ll you girls get up to?” Natalie asks. “It’s a bit cold at the lake.”

“Yeah, but we can have a bonfire, plus we wouldn’t bother the neighbors if we wanted to play music or stay outside.”

Natalie hums her agreement. “I’ll check with Lorraine, make sure she and Madeline aren’t using it.” Lydia doubts they are. They like to winter in Napa, and don’t stay in the lake house until May. “Otherwise, I don’t see a problem to you having a few friends over.” Yeah. A few _friends_. Or a third of the upperclassmen, but, semantics.

Her father comes in at that moment, grunting out a greeting and serving himself. Almost immediately, he’s complaining. “This is cold.”

Lydia tenses and says nothing. She focuses on the garlic potatoes she’s been pushing around her plate, mixing with the salad dressing. 

“Well, it’d be dry if we waited,” Natalie says.

Her father’s knife scrapes against the plate loudly in short, piercing shrieks. “It was an important call.”

“Aren’t they all, Alex?”

“Do you like living in this house? Do you like your nice clothes? You have them because of me and this job.” He punctuates eacb question with a jab of his fork, and Lydia feels a sudden compulsion to knock it out of his hand.

“Must we do this every time?” Natalie stands, bringing her dish over to the dishwasher. Lydia looks between them; she has long since learned not to interrupt. They’ll wear this argument out and finally fall silent, going to their separate corners of the house. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to do something.

“Some appreciation would be nice!” Alex shouts.

“I have to study for finals,” Lydia interrupts before either parent can say something else, getting to her feet. She scrapes her plate, loudly enough that she hopes her parents can’t talk over, and dashes upstairs. Before she’s even reached her room, she can already hear their bickering resume.

Her AP Chem paper is just about finished— she’s glad Harris doesn’t require a paper _and_ an exam. Of any teacher at Beacon Hills, he’d be the one she thinks would do that. But she has enough to do, even if she thinks she could manage both.

Her AP Lit paper though… has been giving her trouble. Literature has never been her strongest subject. Sure, she enjoys reading, but analysis of made up people and stories? She just doesn’t see the _point_. How does that help her, how does that progress anything?

Her paper so far posits that Macbeth is truly the most evil character in the play, despite Lady Macbeth’s proclivity for manipulation, she doesn’t set all of the terrible actions into motion. But… doesn’t she? She kills Duncan first? Groaning, Lydia rereads her thesis for the hundredth time, changing a word here or there, skimming the academic articles for clues on how to strengthen the argument. He made bad choices, he’s evil. Isn’t that all there is? 

She’ll have to come back to it. Latin takes precedence over five hundred year old murderers. She’ll have time later to go over it again — she knows it’s a good paper as it is, even as she struggles with it. It should be more than up to the standards of the class.

The next morning, she’s glad she focused her attention on Latin and not Lit. Latin’s exam is harder than she anticipated, but she’s sure she did okay. Magister Chen said she nailed her oral exam, giving her a wide smile at the end of it.

Besides, the rest of the Lit class doesn’t seem too bothered. “That was the easiest essay I’ve ever had to write,” Mykayla Andrews says in third period as she passes her paper forward to be collected. If her classmates found it easy, surely she was over thinking it.

Because Lit has an essay for the final, they’re able to sit quietly and study for the remaining part of the period before being released early for home. Lydia takes the time to finish planning the party on Friday night.

Finals take place on Thursday and Friday, both half days, so having the party Friday night gives her time to run errands before hand, and clean up on Saturday. Besides, people love blowing off steam right after finals, it’s at least half the point of throwing parties, and blow-off-steam type parties always do better than a regular weekend party. The Saturday after finals is when the fatigue finally sets in, and no one wants to go out. Thus, timing is vital.

* * *

 

By the time the party is in full swing, Lydia has given up answering the door, letting whoever is closest answer, and going instead to make sure there are enough drinks in the cooler. She learned the first time not to do an open punch bowl — it’s far too easy for someone to spill hot pink cocktail all over her grandmother’s white carpet. Jackson has taken care of the kegs, which are, adamantly _outside_ , and…. everything seems to be going well. It’s barely ten forty-five, because no self respecting party starts before ten, and the lake house is booming with carefully curated music, and people seem to be enjoying themselves.

A group of girls enters, scanning the area. They’re sophomores, Lydia is pretty sure, and they smile at her when they make eye contact, but don’t come to say hi.

The cheer team is here, somewhere, Savannah and Brooke had made sure to say hi on their way in, but none of them lingered long. She’s pretty sure they’re in the basement — someone said something about Seven Minutes in Heaven or Spin the Bottle, Lydia isn’t sure. She’d rather hoped to hang out with them for a bit. Instead she’s hovering near the snacks, debating whether or not she should open another bag of Cheetos yet.

“Lydia!” Kelly Summers, a sophomore on the girls’ volleyball team, gushes, running up; teammate Gianna LeBasco in tow. “This— is — _awesome._ ” Her cheeks a flushed prettily, her wide brown eyes somewhat unfocused, and Lydia hopes her invitation’s reminder about safe “party activities” and driving did not go unheeded. No one’s ever gotten in trouble leaving a Lydia Martin party as far as she knows. She’d like to keep that reputation, even if it means her invites get wordy as she avoids any possible mentions of illegal activity.

“Thank you,” Lydia says, preening a bit. It _has_ so far been one of her better turn outs, not including the one last June, but nothing beats June parties on the lake. Jackson had brought his boat and water skiis. When the two of them team up, it seems like nothing can go wrong for them.

As if on a cue, she feels an arm snake around her waist, drawing her close. “Hey, babe.” Jackson’s voice is hot in her ear, and she can smell beer on his breath, but not so bad that he’s drunk — yet. She arches back into the hug, raising a hand behind her to card through his hair.

“Hey,” she says, Kelly completely forgotten. The girls giggle and take off. “How’s your night going?”

“My night is only just beginning,” Jackson says low, and Lydia flushes.

She whispers, “Not here,” even though, with a glance at the living room, her peers are entirely occupied with their own activities. Dancing couples dominate the floor, spilling out on to the patio. A few couples are openly making out and grinding in the corners or on her couch, and she’s very glad she’s locked the various bedrooms. Her first party, she’d completely forgotten, and, well. She did a lot of laundry that weekend, on top of spot treating the carpets for punch.

His hands find their way to her hips, moving his own in time with the music. “C’mon… have some fun…”

Lydia allows herself to be pulled onto the living room floor, letting the stress of finals melt off her shoulders as she sinks into a rhythm with Jackson. His familiar body wash draws her in, and it isn’t long before they’re completely absorbed in one another, her arms draping over her shoulders, chasing his mouth with hers.

This is how is should always be. Easy.

She’s still running lists, at the back of her mind, wondering if the drinks need to be brought out of the fridge, or if the music level is in violation of some noise law, but she’s able to enjoy dancing with Jackson enough that it’s quieted somewhat. She’s dancing with _Jackson_. She’s not unaware of the envious looks that get thrown her way when she’s with him; she takes pride in them. Why shouldn’t she? Jackson is hot, he’s popular, he’s the rising star of the lacrosse team, what is there not to like? What is there not to want?

“Babe,” Jackson says, pulling away. “Let’s go upstairs.”

Lydia shakes her head. “I have to supervise the party.”

“Come on…” he needles, his hips grinding into hers. “Just for a bit…” He ducks his head down to press open mouth kisses against her jaw, moving down towards her collar. The stubble of his cheek scrapes against her skin, and she shivers before forcing herself to push him away.

“No, last time we did someone peed in my grandmother’s Waterford.”

Jackson rolls his eyes, and steps away. “I’m going to go find the guys, then. They’re probably in the basement.”

“What?” Lydia keeps a hand on his arm as he goes. All quiet and smug calm she felt dissipates, quickly replaced with a frenetic energy she can’t explain. She keeps her eyes firmly on Jackson, even as she wants to look around, make sure no one notices him shaking her off. “Why don’t you just stay with me up here for a bit longer?”

“And get blueballs? Nah.”

“Jackson, _later_ ,” she offers. He still doesn’t look happy, but he grudgingly kisses her cheek in acknowledgement. She smiles tightly. “See you, babe.”

She’s grabbing pretzels when she overhears it. The open kitchen angles in such a way that she can stand at one end in the pantry and not be seen, even as a group chats at the table not six feet away.

“I just think it’s kind of pathetic,” a girl’s voice she only vaguely recognizes says.

“I think you’re being harsh,” another replies.

“What? You _don’t_ think she’s overcompensating for something?” the first asks. Lydia steps closer to the doorway, fingers carefully still so as to not loudly crinkle the plastic bag. “Something about her just screams daddy issues and, like, serious self esteem problems. Like, the way she talks, the way she dresses? It’s so _fake_. Who acts like that? And has she ever said a nice thing to you, ever?”

“She’s a frigid bitch, sure, but if she’s got something good, why not flaunt it?” a new voice says. This one Lydia does immediately recognize, and she stills when she realizes it’s Ivy Francis from the cheer team. Now, Lydia wonders who they could be talking about. “She works really hard at practices. We’re never perfect, but it pays off.”

“Right. Overcompensating.” Now that she’s placed Ivy’s voice, the first voice comes to her: Cassie Dolan in her AP Stats class.

“You’re just jealous your daddy doesn’t let you host fun parties at granny’s lake house,” Ivy says, and there is a chorus of “oohs” and “who’s got daddy issues now” that Lydia can’t even appreciate because her blood has gone cold with the realization that they’ve been talking about her.

“Well, my daddy actually loves—“

“Oh, give it up,” a third unidentified person says. “You’re the one being the bitch now.”

“I speak the truth and you know it,” Cassie says with a laugh. The music shifts to a new song, ‘We Are Young,’ and there’s a scraping of chairs on tile as they head, presumably, out on the patio with a whoop and a half-shouted join in the chorus.

Her fingers grip the bag of pretzels so hard it hurts to unclench when she finally realizes what she’s doing. The soft sigh of pretzel crumbs shifting against the plastic is louder than the music throbbing through out the house as she processes what she just heard.

Of course, she knew some people didn’t like her. One cannot be admired by all, after all.

But how many people were sitting around that table? How much of the conversationdid she miss — what worse things were said before she came in? Lydia half wishes she’d stepped out of the pantry mid conversation, if only to see the look on Cassie’s face. Maybe she wouldn’t care. Maybe Lydia is the only one present who did. Ivy defended her… somewhat. “Frigid bitch,” Lydia mutters to herself once she’s composed. There are worse things, she supposes, pushing away the hurt. She wonders how many people at that table were from the cheer squad and whether they all think of her that way. If they didn’t, whether they do now.

“Yooooo,” someone shouts from the living room, jerking her into action. She tosses the pretzels on the counter, hurrying to make sure no one has broken anything. Senior Josh Something-or-Other is standing on the coffee table, and Lydia has to stop herself from yelling at him to get down before he breaks it. “It’s midnight! Thursday exam grades were posted, guys!” He holds up his phone. “I got a fuckin’ C in pre-calc! I fuckin’ passed!” The group gathered around him whooped at that, some pulling out their phones.

Josh has barely finished his first sentence before Lydia’s phone is open, tapping the InfiniteCampus app impatiently, glad she’s never given out her grandmother’s WiFi password to anyone but Jackson and Danny.

> AP Chemistry
> 
>   * Semester Exam: 100%
>   * Semester Grade: 99.54%
> 

> 
> Latin IV
> 
>   * Semester Exam: 100%
>   * Semester Grade: 99.89%
> 


> AP Literature and Composition
> 
>   * Semester Exam: 93.34%
>   * Semester Grade: 98.93%
> 


A _93%_ in AP Lit?

Somehow, this is worse than anything Cassie could have said about her. In this moment, Lydia can do nothing but stare at the pixels making up the two digit number on her screen. That’s a single percentage point above a B+.

Lydia has never received a B grade in high school. Or middle school, for that matter.

The one thing, the _one thing_ , Lydia has always had complete control over is her grades. And it’s always shown. No matter what has gone on at home, with Jackson, at cheer, or anywhere else, her academics have always taken precedence, have always been the forefront of her attention. Whatever the rest of the student body thinks of her, however much she publicly hides how smart she and how hard she works academically, the teachers have always known Lydia Martin to be an exceptional student. She’s taking advanced math at _MIT_ , for fuck’s sake.

How in the hell did she get a 93% in a blow off class like AP Lit? All they’ve really done this semester is watch three different movie versions of _Macbeth_ , two different _Hamlets_ , and talk about how “fascinating” it is that _Moby Dick_ “seeks to occupy every genre of written work invented.” It’s hardly been intellectually taxing.

She has to stop herself from emailing Ms. Ramsay immediately and demanding to know what she did wrong. No, she should wait until the morning at least.

All at once, the music is too loud and the room too hot, and Lydia just wants to tell everyone present to please, fuck off home, because don’t they have better things to be doing on a Friday night than mindlessly getting drunk at someone else’s house,someone whom they barely know because Lydia can only recognize about a third of the party guests at a face value, let alone by name, so there is no way they really know her, or were invited first hand. She just wants them to go home. Any thrill she’d had at the start of the night, any pleasure she’d felt throwing, once again, a great party, has vanished with Cassie, and Ms. Ramsay, and that fucking 93%.

She retreats back into the kitchen, which is blessedly deserted, and leans back against the cool granite counter top, keeping an eye on the party through the doorway.

“Hey, Lydia,” Danny says, sidling up to her. “You okay?”

Shaking her head a bit, Lydia flicks a few strands of her hair away from her face. “Obviously.” He eyes her in a way that he is only all too good at. Danny has known Lydia as long as anyone else in their grade, but she’s been friends with him as long as she’s known Jackson. He’s not privy to everything in her life, but more than most, he’s managed to piece together some of the smaller parts of the puzzle. She has to be careful around him, otherwise he’ll figure it all out. “Are you enjoying yourself?” she asks, though the question comes out a little too fast to be casual.

“Yeah, it’s been great. Everyone seems to be having a great time,” he says, and squints a bit at her for a second. Perhaps she’s reading too much into his expressions. He takes a long sip from his cup, eyes over the rim never leaving her. Maybe she’s not.

She smiles. “I do throw excellent parties.”

“Are you?” he asks.

“Am I what?”

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asks. “Have you been having fun tonight?”

The answer, “Yes, of course,” is on her lips with a blithe smile, but she struggles to remember enjoying herself tonight. For a bit, with Jackson. When Savannah and Brooke stopped by to chat for a moment. She looks down at her phone — it’s 12:11. It’s been two hours and she barely remembers any of it. Only another hour and a half to go. “I’ve had a great time.”

Danny hums, and leans his shoulder against hers. He smells vaguely like weed, and she prays he and his friends did that outside or in their cars and not in the basement. It’s nice though, for a moment. Danny is nice. He doesn’t expect anything out of her. It’s refreshing.

Something crashes in the other room, just out of view, and they both jump. “Well. I _was_ having a great time,” Lydia says, heading for the living room.

* * *

By the time Monday rolls around, she has slept off most of her frustration, and distilled down what is left into determination. She can’t do anything about Cassie — at the moment; Ivy she may have to make an effort of some kind towards — but she’s sure Ms. Ramsay can be reasoned with. 

So at 7:15 Monday morning, Lydia is waiting outside Ms. Ramsay's classroom.

“Good morning, Lydia,” Ms. Ramsay says as she approaches, juggling a travel mug, a ring of keys, and her bag. “Did you have a nice weekend?”

“It was fine,” Lydia says, impatiently watching Ms. Ramsay struggle to find the correct key. “Do you need me to hold something?” she asks finally, if only to move things along. She takes the offered mug, and only just manages to stop herself from tapping her toe.

“What can I do for you?” Ms. Ramsay finally gets the door open, and goes through the process of setting everything down, turning on the lights, and readying her room.

“Why 93%?” Lydia says. There is little point in beating around the bush. “Did I at least have the best score? Or do you not give hundreds?” Lydia took her freshman year history teacher to the school board for having a rule like that — if, as a rule, the teacher doesn’t give out hundreds, clearly she couldn’t teach to the fullest capacity.

Ms. Ramsay raises her eyebrow. “On your final paper?” Lydia nods, curtly, once. “I don’t grade based on, or comparing you to, other students in the class, Lydia, and I don’t know believe in not giving full points. I think you are completely capable of full points — you just haven’t reached your 100% yet.”

“Did anyone score higher than me?” Lydia repeats.

Ms. Ramsay sighs, and looks a bit disappointed.“In terms of technical quality of writing — no.”

“But?”

“There were a small number of students who I felt performed at their, current, best. They displayed the technical skills of a first semester AP student, _as well as_ developing and cultivating their own ideas. They’ve shown growth over the course of the last two quarters. You, Lydia, I know can push yourself to be better. You have always been an excellent student — that’s how I know that you did not put as much effort into this paper as your peers.”

“I met the criteria, though.”

“You met the basic criteria, yes. But one of the main points was on original ideas and thought. You’ve written an excellent analysis of the play— almost entirely taken from lessons and essays I’ve had you read. There’s nothing here that speaks to truly being your voice or your ideas. It’s an excellent regurgitation of class materials. Where are _you_ , Lydia, in this essay?”

It’s a fucking essay about _Macbeth_ , who care where her voice is, where her thoughts are? Literary analysis is about the plot, and the characters, not about her. "The AP test--" she starts.

Ms. Ramsay interrupts her, "Yes, you would likely get a five for this essay, but Lydia, my job isn't just to prepare you for the AP test." Then what is? Lydia thinks snidely. As if she can hear her, Ms. Ramsay says. “I’m here to help you learn to think critically about the media you consume, and the real world history behind why themes and archetypes become relevant. Media, especially literature, has never existed in a bubble: it’s always been a powerful force, reflecting and critique society and culture. When we get into _1984_ this semester, perhaps that will become more clear to you.”

Lydia only just refrains from rolling her eyes. “If I made edits, would you—“

“No.” Ms. Ramsay shakes her head. “Except in cases where I feel a student has struggled more than expected, or received below an 80%, I do not allow students to edit their papers for more points. And when they do, their grade can only rise to an 80%. You are more than past that.” Lydia sighs hard through her nose, and Ms. Ramsay smiles, which only makes her more annoyed. “Lydia, not only do you have a 99% in my class, but it’s weighted too. Your GPA is _fine_.”

“It’s not a matter of _fine_ ,” Lydia counters, heat flushing through her. “I have to be—“ she cuts herself off before she finishes the sentence. “It’s not a matter of fine,” she repeats instead.

“How’s this,” Ms. Ramsay says. “I won’t raise your grade. But if you would like, you can come in during your lunch and we can go through your paper, and discuss your points, the ones you omitted or perhaps weren’t clear to me. This will help you for future papers.”

Her first instinct is to say no — she doesn’t need _help_ understanding _Macbeth_ , arguably one of the most debated and overdone plays in any high school and college level curricula.

And she’s never needed tutoring before.

On the other hand, it would be seriously remiss of her to turn down any academic opportunity that could help her in the future.

“All right,” she says, though grudgingly. And then because even though she’s angry and frustrated, she’s never rude to a teacher, “Thank you, Ms. Ramsay.”

“You’re very welcome.” They both glance at the clock as the sounds of lockers slamming becomes more regular. It’s 7:30— Lydia still has another twenty minutes before class, but students will be filing in soon. She turns to go. “Oh, Lydia?” She turns back.

“Yeah?”

“Your writing _is_ excellent. If you’d ever consider writing for the school paper, do let me know. We could always use more journalists.”

Lydia hums. She _could_ use a few more extracurriculars for her scholarship applications. Even with Key Club and Cheer, her resume is looking a little thin. “I’ll think about it. Thank you. See you in a few hours.”

Heading outside, Lydia makes her way to the science building.

She’s never needed tutoring before, not for something that wasn’t a challenge she sought out, like the MIT classes. It’s not that she thinks she’s smarter than people who need help or tutoring — she’s smarter than everyone, it’s hardly a significant statement to make — it’s just that it’s never been for her. If she’s had a problem, she solves it herself. She researches it, she finds other sources.

Jackson meets her halfway between buildings, and she spend the passing period sitting in the quad listening to him and a few of the lacrosse boys discuss their finals results until the bell rings, and she kisses Jackson goodbye, going to chemistry.

She’s almost looking forward to AP Chem, more than she would normally. Her final paper had been good, even by her standards, and she’d made sure Harris would have no reason to pair her with someone subpar for the upcoming semester long project. Her hypothesis had been airtight — chemistry, she understood how to write. Chemistry doesn’t betray her with subjectiveness and alternative perspectives. With chemistry, she could prove her hypothesis with multiple, carefully executed experiments that Harris couldn’t refute.

Over the weekend she had worried a bit that no one in the class would be able to keep up with partnering with her. She knows she puts on airs, but Harris sees through them. She wouldn’t risk her grade for appearances. But, she reminds herself as she enters the classroom, Harris is right. He wouldn’t let anyone in the class who couldn’t meet the standards he set. Her partner would be able to keep up, she’d make sure of it.

Projected onto the board is a seating arrangement. Harris is sitting at his desk, and as students walk in, saying, “Yes, this is the seating chart for the semester. Yes, you are seated with your project partners for the semester. No, you can not trade.”

Lydia scans the chart for her name, finding herself at a lab table in the second row left of center, near the windows. And her partner —

Cora Hale.

Surely there has been some sort of mistake.

Lydia crosses the classroom, peers up at the projection of little boxes with their school photos organized in the layout of the classroom. There is her picture — it’s a pretty good one, if she says so herself, for a school photo — and there, in the box next to her, it’s Cora Hale’s. She’s wearing some sort of jersey, brown hair loose around her shoulders for once, and she’s smiling crookedly at the photographer, so much more at ease than she’s ever looked in Lydia’s experience.

Cora Hale is her partner. Cora Hale who, as far as Lydia knows, turns in late assignments, quits soccer teams, and generally does not hold to her commitments. _Surely_ there has been some sort of mistake.

She turns towards Harris’ desk, as he repeats his droned reminders about the seating arrangement. He looks up when she steps towards his desk and says pointedly, “No trades, _no exceptions_.” He pauses and grimaces. “Except in extremely extenuating situations.” Like getting into a physical altercation, Lydia wonders. She weighs her options, and, taking in Harris’ stony expression, choses her battles by sitting in her newly assigned seat.

One minute before the bell rings, Cora herself enters with Erica Reyes and Vernon Boyd. They’re laughing, and still talking as they eye the seating chart.

Lydia can tell the moment Cora spots her new assigned seat because all humor drains from her face as her eyes fly to meet Lydia’s. Her expression hardens when she sees Lydia looking back, and Lydia lifts her chin defiantly. She’s an excellent lab partner, anyone should be grateful — no, ecstatic —to have her for their partner. 

Erica and Cora’s heads duck together, and Lydia raises her eyebrows as Erica’s glance darts towards Lydia, patting Cora on the arm. The bell ringing breaks up their little moment, and Lydia determinedly does not look at Cora as she takes the stool next to Lydia.

“Welcome back,” Harris says, standing before the class. “You all appear to have successfully used the critical thinking skills of a preschooler and found your new seats. I will repeat: these are your seats for the semester, and your lab partner will be your partner for the final project. There will be no changes. Any questions?” And before anyone can so much as raise their hands, he says, “Good. Notebooks out, we are beginning stoichiometry today.”

For the rest of the lesson, Lydia glances sidelong at Cora, hoping to catch her zoning out, or not taking notes, or doing anything else that would confirm her suspicions that Cora will be a terrible lab partner, but each time she does, Lydia finds her paying attention, her notes reasonably organized, and grudgingly gives up.

At the end of class Harris tells them their projects will be assigned after they get their papers back so they are able to review his critiques and share with their partners. “I expect equal partnership in all aspects of the project,” he says. “I will deduct points if it appears one partner has taken on the entire workload.”

Perhaps it won’t be too terrible, Lydia reasons, as she packs up. Cora can’t be any worse than any of her other moron classmates. There are certainly others in the class Lydia would like to be paired with less. She just can’t parse out what made Harris think they would work well together.

Lydia watches Cora leave with Erica and Boyd, not saying a word to Lydia in the process, her lips twisted in thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, they sorta interacted!
> 
> like I said at the top, this took a while to update, which I can't guarantee won't happen again, because life is always happening, but I know femslash communities are really difficult to be apart of bc we are so small and sometimes WIPs are left.. forever. I will finish this fic, if only out of spite. it might take longer than I anticipate (I really thought this chapter would be half as long) but it WILL get finished. I rather recommend bookmarking it so you get an email update when it updates and you don't have to keep checking back, but that's just my system of keeping track of wips. 
> 
> anyway. comments/critique/feedback are always appreciated and keep this girl writing <3 
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [girlionceknew](http://girlionceknew.tumblr.com) and [g-taire](http://g-taire.tumblr.com). Come say hi!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey i'm back from the dead.
> 
> i had most of this written last month but #anxiety. in my defense this is half the length of the rest of the fic. 
> 
> once again -- thank you thank you to everyone who has commented on the last chapter, i've been thinking about your comments the entire last two months, and they're what got me through, knowing people were invested. it will get finished, even if it's a bit slow sometimes. 
> 
> content warning for this chapter: cora talks about her history with the team, which has been hinted at in previous chapters

Working with Lydia Martin is aggravating.

The first few days are fine — they won’t be having labs every Wednesday this semester so that they have time to develop their final projects, and Harris doesn’t give them back their term papers until the first Friday, so it isn’t until the next Wednesday that Cora actually has to properly work with her.

Up until that point, besides a nodded greeting at the start of each period, they don't really interact.

Cora learns during that time that Lydia is meticulous, and not only that, but also unreasonably overworking herself for a high school level course. Cora has always thought she took pretty decent notes and turned in well done assignments, but her work is nothing on Lydia’s.

Lydia has not one, but two notebooks, and it takes Cora three class periods sitting next to her to realize that she takes in-class notes in one notebook, and copies those same notes into the second notebook which she then turns into Harris for labs and homework. And her notes aren’t just those Harris has projected on the board, but pages and pages of notes she’s taken independently, whether there was a reading assigned the night before or not.

Without saying a word, Lydia manages to project her standards of quality and workmanship, and that Cora has no hope of matching up.

Perhaps the most irritating thing she does, though, is write half her notes in a language or writing style Cora has never seen before. One Thursday morning, she is too slow copying notes off the board and leans over to see what Lydia had written, only to find she’s taken her notes in a sort of mutilated cursive, or cuneiform, and it’s completely incomprehensible. Now, every time Cora glances over and notices Lydia has switched to gibberish, she gets irrationally annoyed, like somehow Lydia is deliberately keeping the secrets of chemistry from her.

That first lab together is all Cora needs to know that her semester is setting up to be perhaps her most trying yet. Working with Megan will have nothing on working with Lydia.

Harris has just finished going over the instructions with them, and Lydia is already out of her seat, gathering materials and prepping their station, while Cora has barely finished scribbling down the equations for molar mass and density. She watches as Lydia starts lining up the butane and the water and the scale along their workbench without saying a word.

When Cora does labs, it’s a lot of back and forth: looking at the instructions, looking at the experiment, looking at the instructions, looking at the experiment. Glancing around at other lab tables and comparing her work to theirs. Double, triple checking she’s not screwing everything up.

When Lydia does her labs, she sets out all the materials they need, and then, for a long moment, so long Cora wonders if she’s waiting for Cora to say or do something, looks over the instructions, brow furrowed, bottom lip jutting out. She pulls her hair back into a loose bun at the nape of her neck, absently, eyes never leaving the paper, tucking errant strands firmly out of the way.

And then, the paper is set aside, and she’s moving, methodically, but with a pace that Cora can barely keep up with. Lydia seems to only half remember they’re working together when Cora passes her the electronic balance, “Not yet,” Lydia says shortly, drying the butane lighter thoroughly, ignoring the paper towels Cora has also passed her.

It’s clear that Lydia would have little to no trouble doing partner labs on her own, and it’s abundantly clear that she would prefer this alternative.

Cora can’t seem to measure things precisely enough for her, or position the butane on the scale precisely center enough for her, or calculate mass correctly enough for her. Each new command or correction is clipped, or punctuated with a short huff or sigh. Each one grates, and Cora’s shoulders have hunched up nearly to her ears by the end of the lab.

That last one is probably a fair criticism though — for each of the calculations they had to do, Cora simply could not wrap her brain around the string of numbers and letters and substitutions, and copied Lydia’s (blessedly in a normal script) instead. “You won’t be able to copy when we have a quiz,” Lydia sniffs the second time Cora’s answers don’t match up and she takes Lydia’s instead.

Cora doesn’t have anything to say to that. She writes out the equations once, twice, before double checking with Lydia’s after that.

By the end of the lab, Lydia has done most of the work, and Cora, constantly half a step behind, is more frustrated than she’s ever been. At least with Megan, they both didn’t know what they were doing. With Lydia, she wants to show she isn’t stupid, she’s not a slacker, but when Lydia is moving at a pace she can’t keep up with, it’s all she _can do_ to keep up.

A headache is long since throbbing behind her temples as she ducks of out of the classroom, only remembering Boyd and Erica when she’s out of the science building and halfway across the quad towards pre-calc.  She’s still not used to being their friend — that’s what they are now, right? Friends? She’s supposed to walk with them from classes, right? She used to with Megan and Stacy — before.

When she turns around, however, she’s face to face with Lydia. She’s let her hair down again, and it tumbles around her shoulders in tight ginger curls. “Do you have your final paper with you?” Lydia asks without preamble.

“What?” Cora says, confused, looking over her shoulder. Erica and Boyd catch sight of her and wave before heading towards of the arts building. Erica points to Lydia’s back with an arched brow as she passes, mouthing, _What’s happening?_ Cora shrugs her confusion before looking back at Lydia’s impatient face. “Yeah, why?”

“I’d like to read it, if you don’t mind.” Cora stiffens. “I need to get a sense of your… style and reasoning processes.”

 _She means, I think you’re stupid and want to prove it_ , Cora thinks bitterly. She bites back a harsh retort, slinging her backpack off her shoulder and wrenching it open, before finding her paper and handing it over.

 _85%_ is written across the top in Harris’ scarlet scribble, though the smaller, _10% late deduct_ written underneath eases the sting a little. She’s quite proud, if she says so herself.

Lydia tucks it into her binder with barely a glance, and only pauses putting her things into her bag when she sees Cora’s proffered hand. “What?”

“Your essay,” Cora says, just this side of snide. “I need to get a sense of your style and reasoning processes.”

Lydia’s mouth drops open slightly, silvery green eyes narrow on Cora for a moment, before she opens her binder once more, and pulls out her (considerably heftier) essay. _100%_ is blazoned across the top, though for some reason the pages have more red ink scrawled across them than Cora’s.

“Thanks,” Cora says, shoving it (carefully) into her binder.

“Give a thought to our project,” Lydia says. Jackson Whittemore is approaching from Cora’s left, loping across the quad towards Lydia. “I’d like to get started as soon as possible.” And then, without so much as a goodbye, she’s turning to greet Jackson.

Cora blinks, and then the image of Jackson Whittemore shoving his tongue into Lydia’s mouth is firmly burned into her retinas. “Okay,” she says, flatly.

As she’s walking away, she hears Jackson unsuction himself, and ask, “Why were you talking to Hale?” He manages to imbue her name with what Cora would deem untoward derision, considering she’s spoken to him approximately two times, and _he’s_ the massive douchenozzle, so if anyone should have cause to be derisive, it’s her.

“We’re partners for a chemistry project,” Lydia says, and her voice is two parts bored and one part grating ditz. “Trust me, I _don’t_ have a choice.”

Cora’s too far away to hear anything else, but she doesn’t want to. Lydia’s words cut deep at something she didn’t realize could still hurt. After the soccer team, she didn’t think anyone else had that kind of power over her. Apparently one other person does. _Trust me._

She knows Lydia doesn’t want to partner with her — who would, at this point? But it’s not her fault they are, and, as Harris has reminded them multiple times, there’s nothing they can do about it. But she doesn’t have to say it.

The worst part is, she wants this partnership to work out. She could tell, even before they worked together, before she noticed Lydia’s insane organizational choices, that Lydia is good as science, is a good student. She always had the answer, even when she never volunteers it, and, once Cora realized that, for whatever reason, Lydia seems to play at being dumb, it became glaringly obvious just how smart she really is.

So, Cora had been determined to be a good partner. Sure, she wouldn’t be as good as Lydia, but she could get better! Surely there were worse people in that class, people who understood chemistry less than she did. It’s AP, sure, but still.

But it’s Lydia Martin, what is she to expect. Nothing and no one is good enough for her. Why should Cora be any different.

Come lunch time, Cora is still mulling over Lydia’s words, playing back the pretty, aggravated sigh that punctuated them, her brain supplying an eyeroll she didn’t see, an assumed sneer to pink lips.

Across the table, Erica has Cora’s iPod, and is shuffling through her music library, head ducked together with Boyd, occasionally making a comment. Further down the table. Isaac and Stiles Stilinski are sniping at each other, and Scott McCall has moved next to Cora to ignore them.  

“Linkin Park, really?” Erica teases, and Cora knows she means it as a joke, but it’s the fourth or fifth music choice she’s criticized now and it’s beginning to grate. “I didn’t take you for such an emo, madam jock.” Cora eats a Cheez-it and says nothing, shrugging.

A lot of her music comes off the family computer, so it’s a mix of hers and Derek’s and Laura’s, but she doesn’t keep music on her iPod she doesn’t like. The past few weeks, music has been her saving grace, constantly plugged in during passing periods, during down time in class, on the bus, drowning out her classmates and her thoughts in one fell swoop.

If her earbuds are in, no one bothers her. If they do, she doesn’t notice.

She hasn’t had to worry so much about that, at least, not during lunch or some passing periods.

Sitting with Erica and her friends is a relief from a pressure Cora almost had not noticed she’d been carrying. Sure, she’s still aware of the soccer team and their allies, but even the simple act of not having to hide out in the library has released a heavy tension from she shoulders. It didn’t stop the shit — just that morning on the way to the lunch room, senior forward Tina Johnston had rammed her shoulder into Cora’s as she passed, and Cora remembered, rubbing her sore arm, that she and Megan are pretty close — she hadn’t deluded herself that Megan wouldn’t tell the team about their altercation — but Tina had always been nice to Cora, that her rejection hurt more than it should have. But then, they’d all been nice to Cora. They’d been her friends.

Sitting with Erica and company, whatever social structural nonsense other students might prescribe to, is a refuge from those glares, the ones she feels burning into the back she has turned towards the rest of the lunchroom. At least, sitting with them, they don’t burn so hot.

She can’t pretend it’s not awkward though.

Erica says they’ve only been friends since high school (“Boyd and I were in the same algebra class freshman year,” she explains. “And Boyd and Isaac are on the LAX team together, and we adopted him last year when Boyd stopped some older boys—”

“Erica!” Isaac whines.

“What, you _don’t_ want to tell Cora about your damsel-in-distress moment?”)

But the way they act together, they might have been friends much longer; they are obviously very close. They swap inside jokes and stories as easily as breathing, and all it takes sometimes is a single word or glance before one or all of them is giggling hysterically, and Cora is left smiling tightly with bemusement.

They always try to include her, which she appreciates — she can’t begrudge them their closeness. It’s clearly borne from a love of one another that barely two weeks of lunches can not compare to.

Once in a while, without meaning to, they’ll say something that will remind her of her own inside jokes, the ones she’d had with her old friends, and she might smirk or snort before remembering.

Erica always takes an extra moment to explain a story when she notices Cora’s blank face, or when Boyd subtly elbows her in the middle of yet another joke, and they make every effort to include, and it never feels forced, it’s just…

Cora hasn’t had to make an effort towards making friends in — ever. She’s always had the team.  Even if the little gang of misfits fell into her lap (or, more accurately, she was pulled into theirs) it’s still an awkwardness Cora hates.

“Thank _god_ we have another girl,” Erica keeps saying though, always knocking her shoulder against Cora’s with a big grin. “I am so over the drama of the LAX team and the boys. The gender distribution at _la mesa de los perdedores_ has been severely lacking.”

“ _La mesa de los Losers!”_ Isaac says to that, pumping his fist.

“It’s the only Spanish he knows,” Erica tells Cora.

That _is_ one of the best parts of sitting with them. Talking shit with Erica, and Isaac and Stiles can’t understand them.

“C’mon,” Stiles whines to Scott whenever they switch to Spanish. Scott never tells him what they say, and Stiles knows better than to bug Boyd. Usually.

Isaac tries to get Boyd on their side, the one time he and Stiles are ever united, and Boyd simply says, “Should’ve taken Spanish instead of French, dude.” She’s not sure how much Boyd knows, because he never contributes, but she suspects it’s more than he lets on.

Usually they talk about normal stuff — chem, weekend plans, nothing too interesting — while liberally dropping Stiles’ or Isaac’s name at random, or giving them significant looks while they talk about the latest episode of Parks and Rec. Erica’s smile when they manage to rile the boys up together is so bright. That, at least, she shares with only them. Or, only Erica. There had been one other girl on the Varsity girls’ team who spoke Spanish, but she never did in front of the other girls. In a school that is 95% white, Cora can’t blame her. Sticking out sucks.

Most days with Los Losers pass well, and she feels like, even though there are stilted moments, and she’s still not sure sometimes when she’s going to put her foot in her mouth, these are people she actually wants to be friends with, not people she’s around out of convenience.

Today feels like one of the other kinds of days — where she just feels so disconnected from these people she wants desperately to be friends with, and all it does is push her further away from them. Erica’s teasing her good naturedly, she knows because she’s seen them take the piss out of one another daily, but today she’s not in the mood to be on the receiving end. Not after Lydia, not after Tina.

Another few songs pass without comment. Scott is talking to her about lacrosse season coming up (she isn’t sure how he’s on the team, severe asthmatic that he is, but he’s earnestly telling her how hard he’s been training in the off-season and if she thinks he might actually have a chance off the bench this season), and he doesn’t seem to mind that she doesn’t really want to talk and just hums her responses. And then, “Come on, MCR? What is this, 2007?”  2010, actually, judging by the album cover, but Cora doesn’t say anything, even though that one really stings. She shoves another few Cheez-its in her mouth.

Scott looks at her sympathetically, and she knows her expression must have shifted. She shakes her head, and asks him something he’s definitely already told her, but he obligingly launches into his running program — “I’m at about a twelve minute mile,” he says cheerfully. “Any faster and I have attacks. Better than last year, though!”

The next time Erica say something negative — Muse, this time; Cora knows her tastes are predictable, but she _likes_ them — she reaches across the table, and yanks the earbuds from their ears. “Then don’t listen to my music,” she snaps, interrupting Scott, who falls silent with surprise.

Erica looks shocked, Boyd mildly impressed. Immediately, Cora’s face heats up, but she only half regrets it. She gets enough shit already, she’s not going to take it over something as stupid as music.  

She just hopes she hasn’t ruined maybe the one good thing to happen to her in the last few months.

Determinedly looking down at her PB&J, she peels the two layers of bread apart, and methodically starts laying Cheez-its in a neat grid on the peanut butter side. “Well,” Stiles whistles. She’d forgotten him and Isaac on the other side of Scott. “I guess talk of your temper rings true.”

“Shut the fuck up, Stiles,” Cora and Erica say in unison. Erica’s lips twitch shyly, but Cora is too aggravated return it. Her head is pounding, and she knows she’s taking her frustration out on Erica undeservedly, and she’s embarrassed now, but stubbornly refusing to say anything more.

The quiet stretches on, and Cora wishes desperately Stiles and Isaac would start squabbling again, if only for something else to irritate her, to distract her from how badly she feels for yelling at Erica, from Lydia making her feel so stupid, from Tina’s sneer. Her eyes dart up at the clock on the far wall, but there are still fifteen minutes left to the period, and she feels like she’s going to crawl out of her skin. She should apologize. She doesn’t want to. It’s stupid. Why should she? It’s stupid.

“I gotta go,” she mutters, swinging her leg over the bench, crumpling what’s left of her sandwich and shoving it back in her lunch bag. Erica calls after her, but she keeps walking, pushing out the lunchroom doors towards the south quad. Damp February air chills through her long sleeve shirt, and the day is windy, but it’s not so cool that she wants to go back inside. Instead, she sets off across the quad, past the administrative building, and cuts through the parking lot towards the road.

 _Trust me, I_ don’t _have a choice,_ Lydia had simpered. _Trust me._ Cora kicks savagely at a pebble, sending it skipping along the pavement. Yeah, well, neither did she. It’s not like she wants some tittering ditz for a partner.

That’s not fair, she knows, and kicks at another rock, misses it completely, and stumbles into her next step. Lydia knows what she’s doing. Why she plays at stupid, Cora doesn’t understand, but she definitely gets chemistry.

She wonders if Lydia knows she heard her. She wonders if Lydia wanted her to hear. She’d barely turned away when she heard it. It’d be a special brand of cruelty, but she doesn’t think Lydia Martin, of all people, would be above that. She knows girls like Lydia Martin. Popular, pretty, perfect Lydia Martin.

Cora Hale knows what girls like Lydia Martin say about her behind her back. Girls like Lydia Martin make Cora avert her eyes in the locker rooms, girls like Lydia Martin make Cora afraid to look anywhere but the floor, her locker, her clothes, afraid she’ll be caught out.

She knows what girls like Lydia Martin, like girls on her soccer team would say, would loudly proclaim, “Thank god there aren’t any _lesbians_ in here,” as if lesbian is a dirty word, as if it is something she should be ashamed of, something she needed to hide.

Girls like Lydia Martin laugh and nod along when someone says, “God, how gross would that be, can you imagine?”

 _Trust me_.

Cora kicks at another rock, narrowly missing a passing car as it clatters down the road.  

Fuck girls like Lydia Martin. She’s pretty, she’s smart, everyone seems to like her. She shouldn’t be able to get away with cruelty too.

She turns off the road, cutting across the grass towards the trail she uses when she bikes to school in the summer months. It cuts a good three miles off the ride, even if the trail is unofficial and unkempt, and she usually emerges with a good couple welts from twigs whipping at her as she passes. Now, it’s undergrown and barren, and her shoes squelch noisily in the mud, but she’s on the back road past the campsites and tromping towards the Hale House in no time. Still, she’s shivering and two miles or more from the house when she hears a car approaching behind her, and then, when she steps further to the side of the road, incessant honking.

Turning, she sees the slowing approach of a silver Mazda, which finally comes to a stop next to her. “Shouldn’t you be in class?” Laura asks, window rolling down. Her long dark hair is braided away from her face in a neat crown that Cora can’t even fathom trying to copy, and she’s dressed casually, despite it being nearly one thirty on a Wednesday.

Cora scowls. “Shouldn’t you be at work?” Laura works as a software engineer in Redding, and normally only comes up to visit on the weekends. The hour drive along 5, while direct and scenic, is still an hour drive.

“Mom invited me to stay over since Derek’s got his flight tomorrow morning, and then I can drop him off at the airport,” Laura said waving her hand. “I have laundry to do, so I told them I had a doctor’s and bugged out.” She narrows her direct Hale gaze on Cora and says, “Didn’t think I’d come across a straggler this early in the day. Skipping class?” She tsks solemnly.

“You’re one to talk,” Cora grumbles, and starts walking again. The Mazda rolls slowly along, following her, and she scowls again.

“I would say my days of skipping class are over, but,” Laura shrugs with a grin. “Old habits die hard.” Cora doesn’t say anything, just walks faster. Laura creeps the car forward. “Just get in, I’ll drive you home.”

“No.”

“Why?” Laura looks bewildered. “You’re headed home, I’ll get you there faster. Did you call in sick or are you tardy?”

Cora doesn’t answer, and Laura shakes her head. “What an amature. You gotta get someone to call you in so mom doesn’t find out you were tardy for two or more periods. They call home for that, you know.” Cora hadn’t, but she isn’t going to tell Laura that. She’s never skipped class without a doctor’s note before.

Laura puts the car in park and pulls out her phone. Cora stares at her as she, presumably, googles the school’s attendance number. “Hello, this is Laura Hale? Cora called me at lunch time, she was feeling really unwell, I’ve taken her home.” She paused. “I know, I should have signed her out, I completely forgot about the new closed campus protocols. Yep. Yep. Yes, I’m sorry about that. Yep. No. Thank you!” When she hangs up, she looks at Cora. “Mrs. Kennedy still hates me eight years later, huh. How ‘bout that?” When Cora doesn’t answer, Laura sighs. “Will you please get in the car?”

“Just go home, I’m fine. I wanna think.” Cora does not actually want to think. Thinking really meant stewing, and she’d had her fill of stewing for the day. She just doesn’t want Laura to see her like this.

Laura, apparently, can’t take a hint. Or, more likely, is deliberately ignoring the hint. “C’mon, it’s supposed to start raining.” Cora glances up at the dense foliage above and knows it would probably shield her from some of the lighter rain that might fall before she gets to the house, but her shoes are soaked through from trudging through the grass and trails, and she’s already damper than she anticipated. She realizes dully that she’s cold.

“Fine,” she mumbles.

Once she’s settled in the car, Laura fiddles with the dials until hot air is blasting, and Cora holds numb fingers up to the vent. Laura waits a full minute before she asks, “So _why_ were you walking home?”

“Just didn’t want to go to class.”

“Why?” And when Cora gives her a Look, Laura laughs a bit, and concedes, “Yes, yes, not one to talk.” Laura jokes about skipping class, but Cora can’t remember a time when her sister wasn’t a good student, wasn’t a favorite amongst teachers. Derek was another favorite, and by the time Cora rolled around, all the teachers nodded at her name on the roster knowingly. She’s not sure she’s ever lived up to their legacies. She suspects not.

Sure, she’s a decent to good student, and a better soccer player, but she’s lost the latter, and the former seems to be slipping out of her grasp the longer the semester goes on.

“I was just sick of it,” she says. “That’s all.”

“High school is kind of bullshit,” Laura agrees. She takes a sharp curve slowly. The preserve is dense up here, with the trails and campsites curling off towards the south, and the road is more of a gravel trail barely wide enough for two cars to pass. It’s really common for deer or some other critter to startle out of the bushes and run across the lane. “But skipping class isn’t like you.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“Of course there is,” Laura says. Cora eyes narrow, but she doesn’t look away from the window. Laura is being suspiciously agreeable, and she can’t tell when Laura will strike. What is it with her family and cornering her in cars? She chooses not to say anything, which proves to be a mistake, when Laura decides to skip any sort of subtly and say, “So. Megan Larsen.”

Cora groans, and considers throwing herself from the moving car. They’re going slowly enough she probably wouldn’t break anything.

“She’s that twiggy forward, right? The blonde?” Laura says, nodding to herself. “Never liked her. Her mom is so snooty. Oh, no, wait. Is that the woman who makes those amazing brownies?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn. Those were good brownies.”

“She just uses a box mix, but uses one egg instead of two so they’re denser and adds dark chocolate chunks. Megan told me.”

“Really? Sweet. Fuck that lady, then.” Cora’s mouth twitches a bit, but Laura catches the motion, and grins. “C’mon. You were friends with Megan. Didn’t you guys go to soccer camp together?”

“That’s was Camille,” Cora says, and it hurts to remember that won’t be happening this year.

Laura hums. “So what’d Megan do? I assume she did something and you haven’t just taken to hitting people for no reason.”

“I didn’t hit her,” Cora says. “I pushed her off her stool.”

“Semantics.”

“It’s nothing,” Cora says stubbornly. She’s refused her parents’ every attempt to get the truth out of her. She’s just embarrassed at this point, that she allowed someone to get under her skin like that. Like Lydia obviously has, like Tina, like, even, Erica. Poor Erica, she thinks miserably. She shouldn’t have snapped at her, it wasn’t fair. She was just joking around. Now she’s gone and fucked that one too.

Laura says, “It’s obviously _not_ nothing. This isn’t like you.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that!” Cora explodes. “Maybe it _is_ like me! Why does everyone think they know me, why does everyone get to make comments about who I am or who I should be, why can’t everyone just leave me be? I get it, I’m not going to be good enough for you all, just let me be!”

As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she’s embarrassed all over again. What is with her lately and acting like a mopey, overdramatic tween on a bad MTV drama? Throwing herself from the moving vehicle is looking more and more inviting. They’re nearly back to the house, but Laura is driving even slower than usual, prolonging her torture.

“Okay,” Laura says, her tone pitched down and Cora hates that more.

“Sorry,” she mutters.

“That’s okay,” Laura says. The Hale House comes into view as she turns another bend in the trail, the old Victorian a welcome sight. Laura pulls up and around the small circle drive, so her car faces back towards the road, and sets the car in park. “Cora,” she says turning towards her, tone careful, “Talk to me.”

“Laura, leave it alone,” Cora says. Her fingers itch towards the handle of the door, but she doesn’t move. She wants to leave and doesn’t all at once.

Laura’s hazel eyes are so like their mother’s, firm and direct and unyielding. “No. Not if something is bothering you this much.”

When they were younger, Laura had played very much at being the Aggravated Older Sister. Their nine year age difference meant she didn’t like Cora tagging along everywhere, or having to babysit her when their parents were out, and she’d largely confined herself to her room or was out with her friends,  foisting babysitting duties off on Derek. When she left for college, Cora was 9, and barely remembered those slights, and instead remembered all the times when Laura came home from college and actually showed an interest in Cora and her interests, actually came to her soccer games. The distance had allowed them to grow closer, to the point where Cora might actually call her sister a friend. Distance, and teaming up against Derek.

She shifts her gaze out the window, to the dense woods that have always felt like they stretched safely on endlessly, a protective shield against the outside world. “It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she says, and almost believes it, despite everything.

“Sure,” Laura says. “That’s why you’ve barely moved from your bed since winter break.”

Laura has only visited a few times since Christmas, so the only possible way she could know what Cora was doing over break while their parents were at work is if Derek told her. “He’s such a snitch,” she mutters.

“We’re worried about you, babe.” Cora’s fingers twitch toward the door again.

“I’m fine.”

“Mom—”

“Mom and Dad said they’d give me space.”

“Doesn’t mean they’re not worried about you,” Laura says, and if Cora is stubborn, Laura is twice so. Cora has lost many an argument to her sister through Laura’s sheer perseverance alone. She’s afraid she’s about to lose this one too. Even if she were to get out of the car now, which she’s not quite sure she wants to, Laura would follow her inside. If she locked herself in her room, Laura would wait.

She repeats, “I’m _fine_ ,” but her voice betrays her with a traitorous quaver.

Laura is gentle when she says, “You quit soccer. You _love_ soccer. No one who’s been playing soccer since she was old enough to walk would just up and quit. Especially not when she was banking on going to college on scholarship.”

“Plans change,” Cora says, but she’d forgotten about that, and a sick feeling twists in her stomach.

“I hope you’ve got some other cash cow lined up, because tuition is a bitch.”

As one of the founding families of Beacon Hills, the Hales are wealthy, there is no denying. They aren’t even comfortably upper middle class, but somewhere above that, in a nebulous space where they are not obviously, ostentatiously wealthy because they do not have to display their wealth to feel comfortable in it. Still, Talia and Alonso Hale had been upfront with their expectations of their children: they would help them pay for college, but they also had to help themselves. They did not want their children growing up spoiled, expectant, and reliant.

Soccer scholarships had been Cora’s way of paying part of her way, the way working at the pool in the summers had been Derek’s, and camp counselling had been Laura’s. She’s sure her parents aren’t going to leave her high and dry, but she’d forgotten about the agreement all the same. Soccer had been her passion, and her parents had supported her interest in it for that reason alone, but it had also been her job. “I’ll figure something else out,” she says. Camp counselling couldn’t be that bad. She knows the preserve better than anyone besides Laura.

“Cora, I’m serious. We’re worried about you. If it were one or two things, I might chalk it up to teenage angst. God knows I had enough of that to spare at sixteen. But you quit the soccer team, you’re sleeping all day, you barely talk to anyone, fighting Megan, skipping class? What’s going on?” And then, after a moment, “If you won’t talk to us, would you consider talking to your guidance counselor? Or a therapist?”

It is then that Cora finally realizes how worried her parents must be if Laura is suggesting professional help. She suddenly wants to cry again, because this is just one more thing she’s done wrong, one more thing she can’t seem to get right. “I don’t want you guys to worry. It’s stupid,” she says. “I’m just— I’m just tired.”

“Talk to me anyway.” When Cora doesn’t speak, she says, “If you hold everything inside, it just ends up feeling louder and more terrible than before.”

Cora takes a deep breath, and clenches her jaw. It’s Laura. It’s her sister. It’s okay. “I quit the team because I couldn’t stand those girls anymore.”

“They’ve been your friends for years, though.”

“I know. It was—” Her heart is pounding in her chest, and she stares hard at the vinyl dashboard. It’s started to rain, as Laura predicted, and the heavy drops filtering through the trees and dropping on the roof are the only other sound in the car. Get it out. “It was a long time coming but what did it was… we were in the locker room after practice, right before finals, and Hannah said, ‘Thank god there aren’t any lesbians in here.’” Cora glances away from the dashboard to peek at Laura’s expression. Her face is soft and more worried than Cora can stand, but her eyebrows twitch in sudden understanding. “And then Kelly said, ‘How gross would that be?’ and,” Cora clears her throat against the sudden burning she felt there. “And then it was… a fucking chorus of girls agreeing with her.”

“Did anyone say anything?” Laura asks quietly.

“Yeah! I said, ‘Why would that be gross?’ and Kelly said, ‘Because she’d be perving on us, obviously,’ and I said, ‘Or maybe she just wants to get changed like everyone else, and Kelly said,” Cora takes a deep breath, but her chest is tight again and her words come out strangled, “Kelly s-said—”

“It’s okay, you don’t ha—”

“Shut up. _Kelly said_ she wouldn’t feel safe in a locker room with a lesbian because she’d probably try to grope her when she wasn’t looking, which doesn’t even make _sense_ , and that lesbians shouldn’t be allowed in the same locker rooms period, and I — I — I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. I just left.” She pauses. “I probably said ‘fuck you’ too or something, I can’t remember.”

To have the words out there, to make it no longer a misspoken secret between herself and the soccer team and the rest of the school, is like a deadweight lifting off her chest. She takes two deep breaths before adding, “I’m gay, by the way. If that wasn’t obvious.”

Laura’s concerned expression twists into something wryly amused, “I kinda got that part.” More seriously she says, “Thank you for telling me.”

“Yeah.” She clears her throat again. “Anyway, so I decided I couldn’t be friends with people who would hate me if they knew wha— who I am, and I quit. And now they know, because between the lot of them, I guess someone’s got a few brain cells and connected the dots. And they all hate me, and the ones who aren’t homophobic hate me because they lost finals and I’m an easy scapegoat, and I _know_ it’s not all my fault, and they’re just a bunch of bitchy, homophobic assholes.”

The next words come as a rush, like she’s opened the floodgates, and now she can’t close them. “But, it feels like more than just soccer, it feels like I can’t do anything right. I’m crying all the time, for the stupidest reasons, I’m yelling at my friends, who I just made by the way, because you’ll remember that everyone hates me; I can’t focus for shit on anything so my grades are slipping, and, and I mean, Megan’s the worst, but the other girls on the soccer team are always saying shit to me, and I know one day I’m going to do something and the administration won’t do _shit_ even though _they’re the ones starting it_. I just— I just want to be done.”

She hadn’t even noticed she was crying until Laura hands her a tissue. She tells Laura about Lydia Martin in AP Chemistry (“What a brat,” Laura says. “She needs to get over herself.”), and about Tina, and how Erica Reyes has been so nice to her but was teasing her for her music tastes which was just too much for her after the rest of it and that’s why she skipped. About Principal Thomas telling her, effectually, that he wouldn’t do anything about Megan Larsen and the other girls bullying her; Laura makes an wordless, outraged noise at that.  How she’s pretty sure she’s going to fail half her classes this term because she can’t muster up the energy to bother with her homework. “I’m so sick of this place. I hate all of them, and I just want to be done.” Wiping the tissue under her nose, she says, “And I’m _so sick_ of crying!”

Laura reaches over and rubs the back of her neck for a few quiet moments. “They’ll never find the bodies,” Laura says, and Cora snort-sobs a shuddering laugh.

“Get in line,” she says. “Derek’s already offered.”

“Good boy.” Then, Laura sighs. “Why haven’t you told mom and dad? They’d totally let you off the hook for hitting Megan.” Cora doesn’t bother to correct her.  

“I don’t want them to worry.” Laura’s expression twists skeptically, and Cora interrupts her. “I’m serious. I don’t want them to think this is it, this is how I’m going to be treated the rest of my life. It’s not,” she decided, with an unexpected burst of optimism. “People are better than that.”

“Look at you.” Laura pinches Cora’s cheek gently. “Such positivity.”

Cora shrugs her off. “Stop. I’m serious.”

“Me too.” The rain is harder against the roof of the car now. “You should tell them. They’re not — you’re not afraid they’re going to—”

“No!” Besides the fact that their parents are shockingly liberal, they are also, bluntly put, good people. They love her. Her sexuality couldn’t change that. “No, no, I know they’d be cool with it. I just. I want them to be happy for me.”

“ _I’m_ happy for you,” Laura says, reaching over and mussing Cora’s hair. “Tell them, though. Sooner, rather than later. They looove you.”

Cora gives a grudging smile and rolls her eyes, ducking out of the way. “Yeah, yeah.” Sincerely,

“Thank you.”

“Mom and dad would help you find a therapist in-network, if you want. Even if you want to act like this is just about the soccer team, we both know it’s not.” She looks at Cora with their mother’s eyes, brooking no argument when Cora opened her mouth. “You’re exhausted, Cor. You’re under a lot of pressure, and you’re dealing with bullshit no one should have to. And besides that, you’re way too hard on yourself. Talking to someone could really help.”

Cora hums and neither agreed nor disagreed. Laura isn’t wrong; talking to someone might help. Her pride might take a hit, because she has no doubt she’ll cry in front of some stranger therapist too, but… talking to Laura _had_ helped.

They head inside, where Derek is sprawled on the couch, half watching minor league football, half absorbed in his phone. “What are you doing home?” he asks Cora as she kicks off her shoes.

“Are you packed to go?” Laura interrupts.

Derek’s head dropped back on the sofa. “ _Yes_ , I just have a load of laundry in.”

“Is it done? Get it out, I need to do mine.”

“You don’t even live here,” Derek whines, rolling off the sofa, and heading to the laundry all the same.

Laura shrugs. “Eldest rules.”

Cora spends the afternoon catching up on her homework, the assignments she’s been neglecting. It takes far longer than it should. Her headache, while abated, still pounds, and she has to resist the call of her bed. Erica texts her at two, a “Hey, where’d you go?” and a “I’m sorry about lunch.” Cora hesitates before she closes the messages without responding. She can’t focus if she’s busy worrying about something as stupid as music tastes.

Her mother comes home at her normal hour, and, true to Laura’s word, did not know about her skipping class. Cora sticks to her room, even though Laura told her she should try to make an effort in not hiding out, especially when Derek goes back to school, and her father splitting his time between the firm in Redding and the Argent trial in San Francisco; the publicity has already been huge. Her parents mostly acted as consultants this late in their careers, but this trial is something they didn’t want to pass off on an amatur.

Pulling out her Chem binder, she flips it open to finish her lab report, when she sees Lydia Martin’s final essay. Her heart sinks, and the sick feeling in her stomach returns.

It’s thick, twice the required number of pages, twice the length of Cora’s. Cora thumbs through it, a little outraged. Why would someone put this much effort into a high school level  (okay, fine, AP, college level, _whatever, who cares_ ) science class?

Not only that, but Harris’ notes are extensive. Sure, he’d marked hers up, but Lydia’s paper is half critique in bright red ink. She scans them, and find petty corrections to the wording that, sure, made the sentences clearer, but ultimately don’t change the meaning. Some sections are heavily underlined, and starred, which she found extrapolated on the back of the last page.

It is a very good paper, there’s no denying that. Lydia clearly researched her topic (the chemistry of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and recapturing said carbon for use as alternative energy) deeply; her hypothesis is thorough, her calculations complete and accurate. She’d even provided two separate tables for reference, which Harris had said was only optional. The writing style is clear and articulate, to the point where Cora can follow the calculations and her methods with ease, though she suspects the source material hadn’t been as accessible. God knows how long she’d stared blurry-eyed at her own sources.

All the same, the resentment she’d felt towards Lydia during their lab rose up within her again. It isn’t her fault, she thought, that Lydia is some sort of overachiever, the likes to which Cora had no hope of comparing. Her own paper had been good— even Harris had thought so, and written quite a few positive notes on her hypothesis on acid rain on local ecosystems.

Not good enough though. Not for Lydia.

What’s Lydia going to say, she wonders, when she hands Cora back her essay. Will she bother to say anything? The essay will probably just confirm every one of her biases against Cora and she won’t have to. She’ll probably just set it down with a sigh

Shoving the papers away, she heads downstairs, but before she reaches the bottom, she hears her mother talking to Laura.

“... worried, that’s all.”

“She’s fine,” Laura says. They’re setting the table, and someone is setting down plates and silverware with a clatter. “Just going through some stuff.”

“What stuff?” Talia’s voice is sharp.

“I can’t tell you,” Laura says and Cora loves her sister dearly. She takes another careful step down the stair, closer to the doorway. “But she’s okay. She’s not— it’s not nothing. But. She wants to tell you on her own terms.”

“What could be so bad that she can’t tell me now?” Impatience leaks into her mother’s voice.

“Not bad— necessarily. She’s going through a hard time but— _but_ ,” Laura says louder when Talia makes noises to interrupt. There’s the sound of heavy dishes being put on the table. It smells like pozole, which means her father is cooking dinner tonight.  “She’s not a danger to herself or others, so just… let her do it on her terms.”

Talia breathes hard through her nose, a noise Cora could recognize across the house. “She’s had time. She’s not doing her homework, she’s fighting at school—”

“The bitch deserved it,” Laura says savagely.

“ _I wouldn’t know_ , my daughters won’t talk to me.” As a lawyer, Talia Hale has a particular knack for getting the truth out of just about anyone. A steely look, a firm voice, and she’s got them cornered. Unfortunately, her children were born and raised with those tricks, and became inoculated against them early. This isn’t the voice Cora hears her mother use; instead, it’s one heavy with frustration, but more than that, hurt.

She could tell them now. Get it out of the way. Take away the wounded notes in her mother’s voice. But it isn’t right. This is exactly _how_ she doesn’t want to tell them. It’s not fair.

“I know, mom. But she’s okay. She’s having a hell of a time, but she’s okay. I would tell you if I thought otherwise.”

Cora creeps back up a few stairs and stomps her way down, loudly announcing her presence as she rounds the corner into the dining room.

* * *

Laura drops her off at school the next morning on her way to the airport. Sitting in the backseat, with her siblings in the front, Cora feels shockingly young again. Laura and Derek are bickering about how Derek hadn’t needed a shower this morning when he was just going to be getting on a plane and he’d have to take another one when he landed in New York (“Yeah, planes are gross, dude,” Cora chimed in. “Shut up,” Derek said.) and how Laura should have been given priority over the upstairs bathroom.

Laura pulls into the drop off line and creeps along towards the front of the line. “Hey,” Laura says when Cora starts to get out. Cora looks at her and Laura mimes taking a deep breath and releasing it. Cora rolls her eyes, but copies the action, and feels a little better for it. “Bye, love you!”

Cora spots Lydia Martin sitting in a sleek black BMW, waiting to reach the drop off point. Her arms are crossed, her pale face stony. Cora can just make out a man Cora assumes is Mr. Martin in the driver’s seat, his face similarly cold while he spoke loudly enough that as Cora passes the car, she can hear the muffled sound of his words. Lydia, facing forward, didn’t appear to be responding, though, nodding every now and again. When Cora is closest to the car, Lydia’s eyes darts towards the movement, and sees Cora looking. On instinct, Cora gives a grimaced smile, and Lydia promptly turns her face away from the window. Okay. Fine, then.

Erica is leaning against Boyd’s lab table when Cora enters seconds before the bell rings — she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t timed that, avoiding their gaze as she passes. She’s more embarrassed than anything else; she’s not even that mad. When she told Laura about it, her sister had looked her dead in the eye and said, “Your music _is_ emo, you loser. You’re sixteen, so everything feels like the end of the world, but dude, c’mon. It’s just music. Apologize to your friends. They’re trying to connect with you.”

She’s more surprised that Lydia hurries into the classroom after the bell, murmuring a quiet, “Sorry,” to an inpatient Harris, and taking her stool next to Cora.

While Harris is setting up the notes for their lecture, Lydia slides a sheaf of papers towards Cora, which she recognizes as her paper. Cora tenses, looking at it, but it is just as it was yesterday when she gave it to Lydia. No notes in Lydia’s neat cursive, or worse, her weird code. Probably copied out and tucked away in her extra notebook to tear apart at her leisure.

“Your essay was good,” Lydia says quietly, while she pulls out the aforementioned notebook and a pen.

The tension in Cora’s shoulders tightens further. She shoves Lydia’s own paper at her. “Yep. Yours too,” she says, voice clipped.

“Your extrapolation on particulate matter from forest fires, and especially anthropogenic biomass burnings, as a source of gaseous and particulate emissions leading to acid rain, instead of focusing on just human produced pollutants was really innovative,” Lydia said, tucking a strand of long red hair behind her ear. She’s wearing it down again today, but the defined, ironed ringlets of yesterday are gone, replaced with soft waves. “The biochemical process of biomass burnings is obviously, a really important aspect of ecosystems, but the way you combined it with the data from the 1998 study, in Singapore? About the acidic composition of rainwater? I think your math was a little off, but otherwise, it was good.” Her last words are a little rushed, as she hurries to finish before Harris can tell them off for whispering.  

Cora stares at her, squinting a little. She’s managed to say almost more words in thirty seconds than she has in the entire last semester and two weeks of being partners, and she’s almost ready to believe she’s serious when Lydia adds, “Trust me, I don’t say that lightly.” Her pen is already flying across the page of the notebook.

 _Trust me_.

 _Trust me, I_ don’t _have a choice._

“You don’t have to pretend,” Cora says, and if it comes out a little more aggressively than she intends, she doesn’t care.

Lydia pulls back, pen stilling. “What?”

"You don’t have to pretend to like me just because we have to work on this project together.”

“I’m not,” Lydia says. Her tone is neutral. She sniffs. “I don’t have an opinion of you either way.”

Cora zeroes in on the uptick in her voice, the little tremor that gives away her lie. “Yeah, sure. I know girls like you.”

Harris speaks pointedly in their direction, and Cora ducks her head and scribbles a few notes. She’s missed the first few slides, and has no idea what the lecture topic is. When his back is turned, Lydia whispers, “‘ _Girls like me’_?” She’s leaning towards Cora now, and her green eyes are narrow and hard on Cora’s face.

She should stop now. Shrug off Lydia’s bewilderment, and focus on her notes. _Trust me_. But Lydia’s sneer has been playing on repeat in her mind all morning as she readied herself for Lydia’s review of her paper.

“What exactly is that supposed to mean?” This time, Lydia makes no effort to hide her irritation, and Cora almost appreciates the honesty, if it still weren’t such bullshit.

What indeed? Cora has a vivid image, surely borrowed from Hollywood, of the girls who move with the same, sure grace as Lydia Martin, the girls with the pouted lips and who just know they’ll get what theY want if they only cock their head a certain way, give someone a certain look. If Lydia were anyone else, Cora might assume she’s trying to get Cora to pick up her part of their partner project, but she knows Lydia is far more capable than she is, and wouldn’t settle for anything Cora could offer, if she were someone who’d fall for that.

So she must assume Lydia is mocking her somehow. There’s no other explanation. What other motivation does someone like Lydia Martin, someone who has openly admitted to not wanting to be Cora’s partner, have for pretending to be nice?

“Girls like you think you can just say and do whatever you want, and that, because you’re pretty and you’re popular, you’re better than everyone else. You don’t care about how your actions or words affect other people, so long as you get what you want, and when you don’t, Daddy gets it for you anyway.” The words feel wrong as soon as she says them, but once she’s started, the frustration building the last twenty-four hours spills out of her, blood rushing in her ears. “I know you don’t want to be my partner. I don’t particularly want to be yours. That’s too bad. We’re partners. _Trust me, I_ don't _have a choice._ ” Her last words come out a little loud, enough that Harris finally turns to them.

"Miss Hale. Something to add?"

"Nope."

"Then stop whispering with Miss Martin and pay attention."

"Gladly."  

A few moments pass in silence, and Cora, heart pounding, breath coming hard like she's just done sprints, does her best to scribble down the rest of the slide before Harris moves on.

Then, “You don’t know a thing about me,” Lydia says, her voice trembling. Cora looks up at that, so distracted that she hadn't notice how far Lydia has pushed her stool away from Cora’s own. She is startled to see Lydia’s eyes are rimmed red, and despite how angry and hurt she is, guilt roils in Cora's stomach. But she squashes down her compulsion to apologize. _She doesn't know a thing about me either_ , she thinks.

At the bell, Lydia is out of her seat like a shot, the sharp click of her heels loud even over the din of zipping backpacks and talking students.

"Cora," a tentative voice behind her calls.Taking a deep breath, Cora turns to face Erica and Boyd. Erica's light brows are pushed together, worried. Boyd looks unhappy, but in his quiet, disappointed way. Cora doesn't know which of them he's disappointed in.

"I'm sorry," she and Erica say at the same time. They giggle, then giggle again when Boyd heaves a sigh with a roll of his eyes. The tension falls out of the moment at once.

"I was teasing, but I shouldn't have, I should have asked—"

"No, no, seriously, I was just having a bad day. Seriously, it was so stupid, like, I _way_ overreacted, it was _so stupid, I'm_ sorry—"

"No, I shouldn't have—"

"I have two older siblings, I can take some ribbing, I'm more than used—"

"It doesn't matter, I shouldn't have—"

"No, dude—"

"Oh my god," Boyd intones. He picks up Erica's binder and papers and hands them to her. "Just accept each other's apologies and move on." Erica grins and Cora releases a deep breath with a huffed laugh.

Erica hooks her arm with Cora as they walk. "I _am_ sorry, though," she says.

Cora shakes her head. "Seriously, dude, I'm not a baby, I was just having a bad day."

"Still—" 

"Nope!" Boyd says loudly. "No more!" 

Out on the quad between their respective buildings, Erica turns to Cora. "A bad day by fourth period? How does that happen."

Cora tells her the short version of what happened in chemistry with Lydia ("God, she's such a bitch. But she's dating Jackson, so no one's shocked there.") and Tina. "Tell us the rest at lunch," Erica promises.

By the time lunch rolls around, Erica reiterates her opinion of Lydia Martin, and laughs, a little meanly, when Cora tells her about class that morning as well. "I mean, you're not wrong." 

"Yeah, I know," Cora says. "She was really upset by it though." _She had been near tears._

"She needs to be put in her place, frankly. Her and Jackson."

"She called me a goblin once," Isaac adds. Cora snorts despite herself.

Scott and Stiles aren't sitting with them that morning, which, according to Erica is a good thing due to the subject matter. Apparently Stiles has some weird obsession with Lydia.

Boyd eyes Isaac and hums. "What?" Isaac demands.

"Just trying to find any resemblance." Isaac is outraged, but Boyd’s full laughter cuts off any protests he might be trying to voice.

Erica ignores them, turning to Cora. "Your sister sounds awesome, though. I wish I had a sister."

Cora laughs, "Yeah, she's usually cool."

"So..." Erica lowers her voice. "Your parents don't know about you being..." She trails off, and seems to be trying to consider her words.

"Gay," Cora supplies. She's played with a few labels. Lesbian, gay; she feels most comfortable in those.

"Yeah."

Cora shakes her head, shrugging. She shoves a few Cheez-its in her mouth, offering some to Erica, who declines. “No. Not yet.”

“Well,” Erica says, not pressing the issue. “I think your sister — Lauren? Laur _a_ — is probably right.”

Twisting her mouth in a grimace, Cora stares past Erica at the rest of the lunchroom. It’s raining again, and the main quad is deserted, packing the entirety of fourth hour lunch into the cafeteria. It smells like damp tennis shoes and Axe over the greasy pizza and fries. A few tables away, she can see Lydia laughing with Jackson and his friends, and she looks away, back towards Erica. “Probably.”

Erica pokes at her cantaloupe. “I mean, you need some outlet for your, uhh, aggression.”

Boyd snorts next to them, and Cora elbows him without thinking. Erica laughs, and Cora realizes it’s the first time she’s felt like she’s in on some joke with them. She grins. “I dunno. I kinda suck at the whole _talk about your feelings_ thing.” As evidenced by yesterday afternoon.

Isaac chimes in, “I think that’s the whole point of therapy.” Cora sticks her tongue out at him.

“Sports has always been my outlet. Kicking things. Definitely _not_ ramming into people. Running.’” Even when a practice went terribly, when it was a hundred degrees and she just wanted to lay down on the field and die, she always felt better after.

“What about joining the lacrosse team?” Erica asks.

Three pairs of eyes fly towards her. She shrugs. “It would be an outlet for your pent up feelings, gets you back into athletics which you clearly miss, exercise endorphins yada-yada, and, I mean, it's like an open invitation to body slam Jackson Whittemore, who'd turn that down?”

“You can’t be serious,” Cora says. “it’s all guys.”

“So what? Is there a rule that says you can’t?”

“Shouldn’t she just go out for girls’ softball or volleyball or something if she wants to play a sport? Track?” Isaac asks.

Erica dismisses him. “None of those are physical the way soccer is. Lacrosse and soccer are like, the same concept.”

“She’s never handled a stick before!” Isaac says, affronted. He looks to Boyd, like he wants back up.

Boyd, who had been looking contemplative, nods his agreement. “That’s true, it’s not something you can just pick up. Isaac’s been on the team two years and he can barely keep a grip on his.”

“Hey!”

Cora interrupts them before they can start off on another tangent. “I know how to use a stick.”  

Isaac eyes her. “You do?”

She nods. “Yeah, I took Outdoor Pursuits for gym sophomore year and one of the units was lacrosse. Half the class was lacrosse guys.” Most schools probably did tag-football or soccer, but Beacon Hills’ pride in their flagstaff sport is unwavering. “I mean, it was low-key, no tackling or anything, and we weren’t allowed to do _that much_ because we weren’t wearing helmets or mouthguards and I think Jeremy Owens actually got whacked in the face with a stick, but it was a two week unit. I know _mostly_ how to use a stick.”

The thought of joining the lacrosse team isn’t the worst idea she’s heard. Lacrosse is physical, which appeals to her. Volleyball and softball are sports in their own rights, and take a hell of a lot of skill and athleticism to compete, but they’re different from soccer. Field hockey is basically a cross between ice hockey and soccer, and lacrosse is similar to that…

The thought of working on a team of guys, however… “I don’t like guys,” she says.

“Yes,” Boyd says. “We know.”

“No, I mean. My brother is like only guy I have spent significant time around. And my dad. Guys are just…” It’s difficult for her to explain her aversion to guys, besides being gay. But it’s more than that. It’s more than a lack of something. It’s a discomfort. Guys, straight guys maybe, have an expectation out of every interaction with her. She always finds herself inching further and further away and it still not being enough, eyeing the exit or other people in the room. “Guys.”

“Thanks?” Boyd doesn’t look offended, but he is clearly bemused.

She flaps a hand at him. “Not you.” And it is true. She’s been comfortable around Boyd and Isaac since day one, at least, in that respect. Maybe because Erica trusts them. She knows she dislikes guys on the lacrosse team. But… Boyd and Isaac are on the team. As are Scott and Stiles, if the bench counts. Maybe it wouldn’t be terrible. “It doesn’t change the fact that I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed.”

“I’m pretty sure they have to, since there’s no comparable girls team,” Erica says. “Don’t they let girls play football at some schools? Isn’t there some law about that?” 

Cora, Boyd, and Isaac all give shrugs. “Useless,” Erica mutters.

* * *

“Well, it wasn’t as bad as you made it sound,” Erica says, handing the paper back to Cora. She agreed to stay after school to help Cora rewrite her lab review. Without being able to confer with Lydia, she wanted to compare her conclusions with someone else before she had to turn it in. “Do you know what you guys are going to do your project on?”

 Cora groans, and shifts her backpack so it’s not digging into her shoulder. “No. Not yet. I don’t know what I could possibly suggest that’ll meet Miss Priss’ standards, and she hasn’t offered anything.”  

“Tell me about it. Yasmin suggested a powerpoint on the chemical properties of vinegar as a green cleaner; what would we have to write up on that?”

“Better than nothing, though.”

“Yeah.” Erica checks her phone. “Hey, do you need a ride? My mom should be here soon.”

“Nah, my mom’s getting me in a few.” Even though it’s rained the last few days, they cut across the grassy quad towards the South Lot at the front of campus. Above them, rolling thunder gently threatens more rain, but seems to be holding off. They take refuge inside the gym lobby just in case. l

Upbeat music from the South Gym tells them cheer practice hasn’t ended, even though it’s past 5.15. The cheer squad exclusively cheered at lacrosse games, since those were the only ones anyone bothered coming out to support, so Cora isn’t really familiar with their routines besides the ones at the Homecoming games. Most of those include the usual, “We love La-crosse, how ‘bout you!” with awkward emphasis on lacrosse from having to adapt it from football chants.

This isn’t the sort of song they’d play at games; it’s a pop song, with the time signature sped up to accommodate, Cora assumes, their dance routine.

Erica checks her phone and the parking lot before wandering over to the open doors. “Oh, of course,” she scoffs.  

“What?”

“Just—” Erica gestures.

Cora comes over to see that it isn’t the whole team practicing, but rather, just one girl.

Red hair pulled into a tight ponytail, Lydia Martin is going through, Cora assumes, the routine alone.

Cora doesn’t know anything about cheer — she knows the team competes on most weekends through the entire school year, not just during lacrosse season, and sometimes during the morning announcements they might mention the team won or placed at some competition or other. She never really knew what that would entail; a bunch of squads chanting lame school cheers and shaking poms at the judges?

What Lydia is doing is not lame chants and shaking poms.

Though she’s obviously only doing one part of the routine, Cora can appreciate how she times each of her movements — a backhandspring, a cartwheel, _multiple_ n a row (Cora can’t imagine how dizzy she’d be, she can barely manage a handstand), kicks — with the music. She’s twisting and pushing herself into the air which Cora finds shocking only because she honestly didn’t think Lydia capable of contorting her body in such a way. It’s concise, and even halfway across the gym, Cora can see the now familiar set of Lydia’s jaw as she concentrates.

And then, Lydia falls.

It’s in the middle of some sort of aerial move Cora has no name for — a handless cartwheel is the only thing she can think of to describe it. Lydia does one, two in a row, but on the third, her foot slips as she pushes off, and she ends up crumbling into a controlled fall onto the mat. She can hear the thud from across the gym, over the music, and Cora’s instinct is to run and help.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Lydia swears, rolling into a crouch.

“Your footing is getting mixed up, take it slower,” someone says near the bleachers. Savannah Lee is watching from the sidelines, but unlike Lydia, she’s clearly packed up and getting ready to leave. “Push off harder with your back foot.”

“I _know_ ,” Lydia says. She stands, shakes her wrist, and immediately falls into a slow cartwheel, testing her back foot, and then another. She doesn’t even really seem to be talking to Savannah. “I just have to _focus_ , I can’t _focus."_  

“It’s fine, you can work on it tomorrow,” Savannah says.

“I have to get it right,” Lydia counters.

Next to Cora, Erica makes another noise but Cora is transfixed as Lydia falls into another two ariels, followed by a single controlled cartwheel, this time her hands only touching the ground briefly before pushing them back off, instead of following through grounded the whole time.

“I always wanted to do cheer,” Erica says suddenly. Cora looks over at her. Her eyes follow Lydia’s movement, but they’re far away, like they’re not really seeing what’s in front of her.

Cora tilts her head. She tries to imagine the shy girl in a short skirt confidently shaking ass in front of sports crowds. There is something hungry in Erica’s gaze Cora’s never seen before, her eyes narrowed and focused. “Really?”

Erica shrugs, the moment broken, and glances down at her phone. “Oh, my mom’s here. You sure you don’t need a ride?” Cora shakes her head. “Okay, see you tomorrow!”

She gives a little wave, but when she reaches the doors, she turns and says, “Oh! I’ll look into that sports rule for you!” And gives one last, more vigorous wave, before the doors slam behind her.

The next morning, Erica leans over her work table towards Cora. “Hey,” she whispers. The bell hasn’t rung yet, but Harris is passing back assignments and speaking to students about their work. “I looked up that rule, the one where they have to let girls play guys’ sports if there’s no girls team. Title X or something—”

“Title IX,” Lydia interrupts. She’s not looking at them, but at her lab corrections. Or, probably, her lab-is-perfect-affirmations.

“Right,” Erica says, smiling a little menacingly, though Lydia doesn’t see. “Title IX. Thanks. Anyway, there’s nothing stopping you from trying out for the lacrosse team, Cora.”

Before Cora can say anything, Lydia has swiveled around in her stool, her long red hair whipping about. “ _What_?”

“What?” Cora and Erica say at the same time.

“ _You’re_ trying out for lacrosse?” Green eyes stare hard at Cora, and for a moment, Cora pauses, caught. Dark brown or copper flecks ring Lydia’s iris; she’s never noticed that before. She supposes she’s never had reason. 

“Yeah,” Cora says, though until that very moment she’d been planning to tell Erica thanks for looking, but no thanks, softball would have to do for her. “I am. Problem?”

“You— you can’t try out for lacrosse.”

“Why? Title IX says I can.”

Lydia’s mouth opens, like she might have any number of things to say in response to Cora, but instead she closes it, and Cora thinks that is going to be the end of it. Then, Lydia says, “The Beacon Hills Lacrosse team doesn’t let just anyone on the team, and it especially doesn’t accept castoffs from lesser valued teams.”

 _Castoffs_. But Cora scoffs, “We won state four seasons in a row, because of me. Subpar my ass.” They lost without her.   

“Lacrosse requires a bit more than kicking a deflated ball back and forth. The team values cooperation, work ethic, and _commitment_.” Her smile is tight, and it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Not quitters.” With that, she tosses her hair over her shoulder, and faces the front as Harris start the lesson, the bell blaring over his words.

Cora’s mouth drops open, and she can’t think of anything to say. If she hadn’t been committed to trying out, she certainly is now.

She gives Erica one last exasperated look before she has to focus on the lesson.

Erica looks two parts angry at Lydia, one part delighted with the results. “Oh, lacrosse drama is going to be _so much_ more interesting this year,” she whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> taylor/@candyvan 9/19/2018: stop! hurting! lydia! martin!  
> meanwhile: cora hale has cried for three consecutive pov chapters. it's only up from here folks. mostly. this is very much not intended to be an angsty fic, but they're sixteen okay, the world is constantly ending. 
> 
> anyway -- thank you thank you again to everyone who has commented and continues to comments. you're lights in my life that mostly consists of very boring work. 
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [girlionceknew](http://girlionceknew.tumblr.com) and [g-taire](http://g-taire.tumblr.com). Come say hi!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a (deserved but unexplainable) break, I'm back. 
> 
> Shoutout to every single person who wrote on the last chapter (6 months ago.....) and a special shoutout to that anon a few weeks ago who asked my on tumblr if I was still working on this -- It really reminded me that even a few people are interested in what I'm writing. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This will one day be finished, and I think I'm in a better place than I was a few months ago, so I hope it'll be finished quite a bit faster.

Lydia spots Jackson and his friends across the quad, standing semi-circle around something she can’t see from where she’s approaching. Mid-February chill clings to her skin as she walks, and she wishes she’d had time to dry her hair this morning. Her dad needed to be at the office early, and she hadn’t had time to style it, leaving it loose, yet three hours after showering, and her hair is still damp. She's going to have to put it up in a bun, she decides grimly. Leaving it unstyled makes her self conscious, like she is half undressed.

As she gets closer to Jackson’s friends, she realizes they’re standing around Erica Reyes, who, despite being fairly tall herself, is dwarfed by the lacrosse players she’s staring down. It’s odd, she thinks. Why on Earth would Jackson want to talk to Erica Reyes. Then, she realizes that, of course, Jackson _doesn’t_. His arms are crossed, and is clearly losing patience.

That left a new question: why on Earth would Erica Reyes bother Jackson? She’s no one. Of course, everyone _knows_ who Erica Reyes is, in a school of fifteen hundred students it’s impossible to not know the girl who has seizures. But that doesn’t make her someone. That just makes her a sad footnote in the back of Lydia’s mind.

A sad footnote who is clearly making herself a nuisance. If Jackson didn’t have things under control, Lydia would have to step in.

Lydia can’t hear what Erica’s saying, but Jackson shrugs, and she steps back when he says, “Sure, I’ll take it down.”

Erica’s brows shoot up, and she looks hopeful. “You will?”

"Fuck no, it's hilarious,"  Jackson says.

The group explodes into raucous laughter. Lydia plasters a smile onto her face, and slips her arm around Jackson's waist, carefully choosing her moment when his joke has stuck and he's smiling smugly, but not too early, so she's not stepping on his moment. Normally, she'd might sidle up to Danny first if Jackson was busy, but Danny isn't present, and she doesn't really know the other boys, a few juniors and sophomores, and even one or two freshmen. She sizes them up; definitely early recruits for the lacrosse team.

"Hey," Jackson says, turning to kiss her. When they pull away, Erica is staring with disgust and glassy eyes.

"Are you still here?" Lydia asks, curling her lip, and giving Erica a once-over. Dressed in a loose BHHS sweatshirt and leggings, Lydia isn’t sure if the most offensive part of Erica’s appearance is the leggings as pants (in public!) or the frizzy ponytail she’s sporting. Appearance is a point of pride for Lydia, and other peoples’ disregard for their own will never not be baffling to her. The worst part is, Erica might even be pretty, if she bothered to wash her face every once and awhile.

Erica's gaze snaps to Lydia, and Lydia doesn't take a step back, but she wants to. Huge brown eyes are rimmed red and burning, hatred like Lydia has never seen before, directed at _her_. "Fucking bitch," Erica breathes as she turns away, rubbing savagely at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater.

Swallowing around the shock of Erica’s expression, Lydia calls after her, "Your insults are as tacky and outdated as your outfit."

But Erica doesn't turn around, and the laughter of Jackson and his friends feels far away as she watches Erica.

Vernon Boyd and Cora Hale are walking to meet Erica halfway, and while, from what Lydia can see, Cora simply looks perplexed, Vernon's expression is cold and hard, and she realizes with a start that he’s staring directly at her. She looks away quickly, and when she glances back, his attention is solely on Erica now. Cora is rubbing Erica’s arm, and Lydia’s stomach twists uncomfortably when she sees Erica lean into that touch, clearly upset about whatever just happened.

Jackson is still talking to Keenan and a sophomore she doesn’t know, so she presses her cheek against Jackson’s arm, breathing in AXE and detergent, not wanting to interrupt. Across the quad, the five minute warning bell chimes, and some of the boys peel off. “What was that about?” she asks as they walk toward the main building. Students dart around them, but don’t cramp into their space. Sophomore Leah Tanaka from her sixth period waves as they pass, and when Lydia smiles back at her, her cheeks darken and she hurries away.

“What?”

“That bit with Erica.” And then, when he just shrugs, adds, “Reyes.”

“I know who she is,” he says. “It was nothing. She was just being annoying.”

Annoying, Lydia can believe. Since the start of the semester when Cora Hale inexplicably befriended Erica and Vernon Boyd, there hasn’t been a day Lydia’s arrived to chemistry and they haven’t been hanging around _her_ lab table.

Jackson has pulled out his phone, barely watching where he’s walking as he texts, trusting everyone else will get out of his way, and they do. She loops her arm more firmly with his and changes the subject. “Are you working out with Danny after school today?” Lacrosse practice starts in less than two weeks, but returning players are expected to be training and prepping on their own in between seasons, and especially in the lead up. Lacrosse didn’t become the premier sport in Beacon Hills with unmotivated and uncommitted players.

Which reminds her that Cora Hale plans to try out.

Can she go ten minutes without Cora Hale interrupting one train of thought or another? They haven’t spoken, not since Cora made it abundantly clear how she felt about Lydia. _Bitch_ , Erica had said. Does Cora think of Lydia that way too? She wouldn’t be shocked, she thinks. They’re friends, afterall. Maybe they’ve talked about her.

She just wished she knew why, of all people, Cora Hale thought of her like that.  

She hasn’t told Jackson about Cora trying out for lacrosse, mostly because she hopes Cora will drop out of this like she dropped out of soccer. There’s no point in unnecessarily causing drama, not when lacrosse is involved. The only attention she wants paid to lacrosse is how well Jackson is doing so he can become captain and get the scholarships and captainship he deserves. Everything else is simply white noise.

“Yeah,” he says. He hasn’t looked up from his phone.

Lydia presses on. “Good. Then I’ll meet you after cheer. We can… _hang_ _out…_.”

The heavy affectation she puts into the words gets his attention, and he puts his phone away, his other hand drifting below her waist. They’re stopped now, outside the main building, and the last warning bell sounds above their heads. “Yeah?” he asks, his voice low. Lydia glances around, noting a few looks they’re getting, and flushes, pleased.

“Yeah,” she says, tilting her head up expectantly.

 

Nora and Kelly are shrieking as they dash towards Nora’s mother’s car, the early February rain falling hard and cold. “Bye, Lydia!” Savannah calls as she heads out. Lydia smiles, and waves, watching a couple girls from the squad pile in the same car.

Boys from the lacrosse team are trickling out of their locker room, skin damp and reeking of sweat. Lydia eyes them; there’s a week still until tryouts, and returning players almost never get replaced but last year’s seniors were both seriously good and also comprised of a huge percentage of the team. The returning players need to bring their A-game more than ever if they want any hope of beating Devenford Prep. She remembers a few of the juniors and seniors at the time getting into a fight after a close game last year, and knows Jackson and some others still nurse grudges. No doubt there are a few on the other team who feel the same.

“Lydia,” a quiet voice says behind her.

She jumps, turning, and then must jerk her chin up to look at Vernon Boyd. His dark skin looks damp but freshly washed, and he’s changed out of his sweaty workout clothes already. “What?” She is too surprised that _Vernon Boyd_ is speaking to her to be polite.

He doesn’t seem to care. “Tell your boyfriend to take it down.”

“Excuse me?”

"Your boyfriend.” He spits the word, and Lydia straightens, hackles rising. “Tell him to take the video down."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she scoffs. Jackson hasn’t mentioned any video, certainly not any that he’s posted. He’s always on Youtube and Facebook, and it’s not like she’s keeping constant tabs on what he’s doing, but she thinks she would know before Vernon Boyd if Jackson had posted something that needed to be taken down. He wouldn’t risk his chances with Harvard and Yale by posting something stupid.

Vernon stares at her for a long, quiet moment. He has a disconcerting way of looking at her, like he’s looking right through her. He’d done the same thing this afternoon, after Erica embarrassed herself in the quad. “No,” he says finally. He shakes his head, and for the first time, the cold expression on his face wavers, and something like pity takes its place instead. Lydia hates him suddenly, straightening her shoulders and setting her jaw against whatever he is about it say. “I guess you don’t.”

Lydia doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean, and instead of asking and further condoning his presence, she rolls her eyes. "If you're done wasting my time, I have to go find my _boyfriend_ ," she says, spitting the word just as he had.

As if on cue, Jackson emerges from the locker room, Danny in tow. “Jackson!” she calls, breezing past Vernon with a toss of her hair. Jackson’s hands on her hips grip at her shirt and only Danny’s irritated cough breaks her away from him.

She throws a pointed look at Vernon as they leave, so he knows exactly what she thinks of his demands, but his expression hasn’t changed. She just catches a glimpse of him shaking his head before the gym doors slam between them.

“Am I a bitch?” she asks later, staring at the ceiling of Jackson’s bedroom. The sheets smell like Old Spice and Axe and sweat, and she wants more than anything to roll into the warmth of Jackson’s side, but the thought has been bothering her all day, ruining any hope she has of basking in her _very deserved_ afterglow.  

Ivy Francis called her a frigid bitch to who knows how many people at the end-of-term party. Cora didn’t use so many words, but she clearly thinks it. Erica said it to her face. Vernon Boyd….

“I’m not answering that question,” Jackson mumbles after a moment too long.

She twists her head to look at him. He’s half asleep, eyes closed. His lashes brush against his cheekbones, and she’s tempted to reach out and brush her thumb along the curl of them, wondering if they’re as soft as they look, but she doesn’t. She did that once and he complained she was trying to poke his eye out. “Why not?”

“It’s a trap.”

Crossing her arms, she looks back at the ceiling and doesn’t say anything.

Then, “See?”

“See _what_ ,” she snaps.

“I told you it’s a trap.”

“All I did was ask a question.”

Jackson shifts, tugging the sheets higher on his bare chest. A cold draft passes over her naked skin and she shivers. “You asked if you were a bitch. Either I say no, in which case you get mad because you think I’m lying or you think it’s anti-feminist because you’re reclaiming the word in a head bitch in charge kind of way, _or_ I say yes and you get mad because I called you a bitch.” He pauses. “Or, apparently, I don’t say anything, and you stew over both possibilities.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” she says petulantly, and doesn’t know what answer she wants to hear. She _is_ the head bitch in charge of Beacon Hills. She _earned_ it.

When Kaitlyn Roosevelt was the captain of the cheer squad, she ran the team with an iron fist. She was glorious: tall, blonde, beautiful. She was homecoming _and_ prom queen, and despite not having the grades to be on the student council, she was still voted by the student body to give one of the speeches at commencement. The squad made it to regionals both years under her captaincy, and even though they didn’t place either time, it was the closest the squad had ever come.

Freshman year, she was also the one who decided Lydia didn’t make the squad. Sure, Coach Park ultimately made the decision, but Lydia would never forget Kaitlyn’s cold question, the moment Lydia knew she had been rejected: “What do you _want,_  Lydia? Because it doesn’t seem to me like you want very much to be on this team.”

“Of course I do,” Lydia had said, breathless from the routine. Her face was hot and she was so glad there were only a few other girls left in the gym to witness her humiliation.

“Prove it,” Kaitlyn said with a shrug. “Next!” Lydia was dismissed.

What Lydia wanted was to never be cowed by someone like that again. Already by freshman year she was popular and well-known — as much as one can be at fourteen and barely stepping into puberty. With a mind like a whip and a lake house to offer up for parties, not to mention a knack for charming Redding liquor store employees, she quickly made herself indispensable. By the end of that year, Jackson had taken notice of Lydia and it almost didn’t matter that she wasn’t on the cheer squad.

Almost.

But Lydia is nothing if not determined.

That next August, she put herself at the front of the queue and met Kaitlyn’s blank stare with her own. And maybe the hours of independent running and training and stretching and yoga carried over from her few years of figure skating had been enough to push her onto the list of girls who got a thin smile and a “Let Tracey know what your uniform size is,” or maybe Lydia had made herself too much of a Someone for Kaitlyn to say no to again.

Lydia never wanted to not be Someone ever again.

People probably thought Kaitlyn was a bitch sometimes, too. Lydia certainly had. People tend to not like self-assured women who know what they want.

“Why do you care? You’re hot, who cares if you’re a bitch?” Jackson asks.

Lydia huffs, “It’s not a good look. Besides, I want to be Senior Class President next year. And Prom Queen, with you.”

Jackson rolls over her, pressing a kiss to her neck. “We’re a given for Prom Court,” he says, between kisses. Lydia’s mind whirls and she wants to stay mad, but Jackson’s hands are moving again and her attention is split between him and the memory of Erica Reyes calling her a bitch, and whether she reflects wider public opinion and if that could affect her chances at Prom Queen.

“If I say you’re super hot and totally kick ass, does that count as answering your question?” Jackson asks. His hands slide down her side, she can only pretend to be mad at him for so long, attention narrowing when his fingers grip her thigh.

She sighs, like she has to think about forgiving him. “Hmm… perhaps.”

“How about….” Jackson mumbles into her shoulder, his warm breath chilling her skin. “I make it up to you…”

“Well,” she says. “Next Wednesday is Valentine’s Day…” She feels his lips pause a moment at her throat.

He pulls away, leaning over her. “I’ve got tryouts next week,” he says, and in the darkness of his bedroom, his sharp features are thrown into relief, his brow furrowing.

“No, I know,” she says quickly. “But you’re the best on the team. It’s not like Coach would cut you, it’s just a formality—”

“It’s really important,” he says, pushing away from her.

“I know that!” Sitting up feels desperately exposed, but her bra and shirt are on the floor closer to him and she doesn’t want to reach around him. Holding the sheet to her chest, she tries again. “I just meant that _after_ tryouts, on Friday, or Saturday, we could… do something.” She adds quickly. “I have a Latin test on Thursday that I have to study for on Wednesday anyway, it’s fine.”

“Whatever,” he grunts. “I’ll figure something out.” He’s dressed already, and crossing the room, flicking on the switch. She can’t count the number of times she’s been naked in front of him, shown off in front of him, but with him acting like this, she wants nothing more than to tug on her clothes and go.

Instead she rolls her eyes and snaps, “How terrible, planning a date with your girlfriend.”

“You never want to _do_ anything, you just want to watch _The Notebook_ a hundred thousand times.”

“Or maybe I don’t consider going bowling with your buddies a date. Or going out after games _with the lacrosse team_. Maybe, as your girlfriend, we might do a little more than socialize with your friends and fuck.”

“Danny’s your friend too.”

Lydia huffs, standing and pulling on her clothes. “Oh, yes, I forgot Danny was an equal part of this relationship.”

“What do you want?” Jackson throws up his arms, and Lydia wonders if she’s being unreasonable, and then, just as quickly, laughs. How unreasonable, wanting alone time with your boyfriend.  

“Do the other boys take their girlfriends on dates and invite the whole lacrosse team? Do the other girls on the team have to bug their boyfriends for _days_ to buy them roses from the Key Club?” She knows they don’t, but she enjoys watching Jackson roll his eyes in disgust. Stepping into her heels, she finds her balance, adjusting to her new height. She needs to get rid of these, she thinks, they pinch at her toes. “Exactly. Now, are you going to stop having a tantrum, or do I need to call my mother to pick me up?”

He’s muttering something about small towns and limited locale, but she’s not listening anymore. She’s not being unreasonable, she tells herself again. She just wants to have some alone time with her boyfriend, the guy she loves, the guy who loves her.

The thought that there might be a reason he always invites the lacrosse team, or Danny, or someone else along on their dates strikes her midway through the ride home, and she’s so preoccupied with what that could possibly mean, she forgets to tell Jackson about how weird Vernon Boyd was this afternoon, or about the supposed video.

 

When she arrives at the chemistry classroom that morning, her lab table is, per usual, surrounded.

As Lydia crosses the room, three pairs of eyes flicker towards her and away. Erica (“Fucking bitch.”) is leaning her hip against the side of the table, but steps away slightly, not looking at Lydia. Boyd ( _Pity_ ) doesn’t have to step back to let her pass, but he does. He grimaces something that might be a greeting, but Lydia sweeps past without acknowledging him. Cora (“ _Trust me,_ I _don’t_ have a choice.”) ignores her.

That would be just fine with Lydia, except: “I’m going to give you the last five minutes to confer with your partners,” Harris says, clicking off the projector. “For those of you who don’t know how to read a syllabus, you will be turning in your project proposals on Monday. I expect three pages, with full participation by both partners. I will be able to tell if one partner did all the work.” He throws a pointed glance at a few students, but, to Lydia’s surprise, not her. Whenever she’s been partnered with other students, that comment has always been directed at her.

The sound of scraping stools and shuffling papers take over as soon as Harris makes it clear he’s done talking. Next to her, she hears Cora sigh deeply, and Lydia throws her own irritated look at the ceiling before turning to face her partner.

Cora looks better than she has in weeks, since before winter break —  not that Lydia was really paying much attention to her then. Not that she’s paying attention to her now. Shadows still rest heavily under her eyes, and she’s looking at Lydia blankly, but she’s not hunched over or scowling, which seems to be an improvement.

She’s a good partner — better than Arjun so far, and she keeps up with Lydia more than any other partner she’s had this year. Obviously, Lydia has to slow down in order for Cora to keep pace, but that’s just Lydia’s reality. Sometimes, Cora manages so well that Lydia forgets, because Cora is always ready with the next instrument, or writing down the equations before Lydia has to spell it out for her. They don’t speak, except when Lydia notices the frustration furrowing Cora’s brow and slows down to explain what she’s doing. She’s never done that before for a partner, and Cora never thanks her, just scowls and scribbles down her notes.

Still, it might be too much to expect her to come up with a project of the scale Harris is expecting.

“So,” Lydia starts, when Cora makes it clear she isn’t going to speak first. If this were any other situation, Lydia would be happy to continue ignoring Cora until she broke. But this is chemistry, and Lydia doesn’t play games in chemistry. “Do you have time this week to meet up?” It’s already Thursday; Harris hasn’t given them much notice. Though, Lydia chides herself, she should have planned for this already and so should Cora. Evidently, Cora didn’t feel the need to reach out to Lydia about working on their project. She doubts Cora’s given it much thought at all. Having to shepard a partner in the vague direction of participation is exactly the reason Lydia hates group work.

Cora grimaces, and says, “I can meet right after school today or tomorrow, but I don’t have a ride after five thirty. Saturday I’m free basically all day, and Sunday I’m free in the morning.”

It’s Lydia’s turn to make a face at the thought of dragging their work into the weekend. She has practice after school the next two days, a meet all day Saturday in Redding, and Robbie Jensa’s parents are out of town so he’s throwing a party, which means she won’t exactly be nursing a hangover Sunday morning (Lydia hasn’t had a hangover since freshman year — she’s learned her lesson), but she won’t be well rested either. Sighing, she says, “Sunday, then.”

“Okay, my house or yours?”

“What about the library?” Lydia did not want to deal with Cora Hale in her house, and she definitely did not want to trek through the woods to find the Hale House.

“Library hours on Sundays are eleven to three,” Cora says. “My mom can’t pick me up after twelve and my dad’s in San Francisco, so I was thinking we might meet at nine-thirty or ten.”

Her father has a standing golf outing every Sunday afternoon with some of the men from work, and her mother is visiting Lydia’s aunt which means, “I guess you can come to my house.”

Cora’s brow quirks, but she just says, “Okay, sure,” as the bell rings.

She’s packing up, and standing to leave, when Lydia asks, “Don’t you need to know my address?”

Erica and Vernon have joined her now. Vernon is texting, but Erica is glowering somewhere over Lydia’s left shoulder. She wants to stand up, just so she’s not being towered over by people who obviously don’t like her.

Cora gives one of her twisted grimaces, like she’s trying to smile but Lydia hasn’t done anything to amuse her. “Everyone knows your address,” she says, like it’s not a compliment.

 

Sunday morning dawns raw and cold and Lydia still aches from her meet, from the party, from Jackson. Downstairs, Prada is barking, her nails scrabbling on the hardwood of the living room as she paces back in forth in front of the bay window. Someone must have just jogged past the house, or taken their dog for a walk.

They placed fourth yesterday, which is way better than she was expecting, considering they’ve only managed to make it to a third the number of meets most of the other teams competing have gone to. Savannah told them team afterwards, “This was really awesome, guys, I’m really proud of you,” and Lydia had thought she must be lying through her smiling teeth because though they did better than they thought they would, there is little to be proud of in fourth place.

“Lydia!” her father shouts from his study. “The dog!”

Groaning, she pushes back her covers, only for the doorbell to ring moments later. It is then that she remembers Cora Hale. “Dad, let her in!” she shouts as she scrabbles to pull clothes on. She doesn’t have time to put her face on, only pull her hair up into a bun, and she grimaces when she catches sight of herself in the mirror, before reminding herself that Cora Hale’s opinion has never mattered. Besides, it’s not like Cora ever puts any effort into her own appearance.

By the time she’s pounding down the stairs, Cora is crouched in the foyer scratching Prada behind her ears, and, to Lydia’s horror, her father is still standing there, talking to her.

Her father scoffs. “Are you good at chemistry, Sarah?”

“Cora,” Cora says. She glances at Lydia suspiciously, before answering. “I mean, it’s an AP class, so I mean, I must have… been good enough to get into the class.” She says it like she’s asking a question but also like she might be challenging him.

“AP?” His eyebrows shoot up, and Lydia tries to interrupt.

“Dad, we gotta go study,” she says.

“Lydia’ll need all the help you can give her, Sarah.” He gives Cora a significant look, “Good luck.”

“She—?” Cora frowns, and stands. Prada, realizing she’s been forgotten, wanders off, the clicking of her nails fading into the kitchen. “She’s like the smar—”

“Come on, Cora, we can study in my room,” Lydia says loudly. She ignores the quizzical look and turns to stomp up the stairwell. “Careful, the  stairs are slippery in socks.”

“I’m leaving at eleven forty, Lydia,” her father calls after them.

She’s acutely aware of the state of her bedroom — she tidied up last night before Robbie’s party but her Latin homework is still in a pile on her desk, and yesterday’s dress is dangling half out of her wicker hamper. Cora’s eyes are travelling along the walls and Lydia feels compelled to explain, “My mom decorated it, when I was, like, twelve.” The purple walls and pop art feel weirdly childish all of a sudden. Tacky.

Cora shrugs, like she doesn’t care, and of course she wouldn’t. Cora doesn’t seem to care much for or about anything Lydia said or did.

“You can sit wherever,” Lydia says, and Cora perches herself tentatively on the edge of Lydia’s bed, her backpack falling to the carpet with a thunk. She shouldn’t have felt so self conscious about not being ready; Cora looks like she just rolled out of bed with her track pants and hoodie. “So,” she says, dragging the desk chair a little closer to the bed and taking a seat. She’s not sure what she’s supposed to say to start, not with Cora looking at her like that — half expectant, half coolly closed off. “Did you have any ideas on what you wanted to do for the project?”

Cora shrugs, and says, “Yeah, a few.” Lydia swallows her skepticism when Cora pulls out her notebook, and sees she’s scribbled down some notes. She sees a few starred bullet points with “recapturing C for alt energy” and “chem of C in atmosph” written in a surprisingly neat hand and realizes they’re notes on _her_ paper. “I was thinking we could try to combine our theses somehow.”

“Oh?” Lydia asks. It had been clear from Cora’s paper that she is interested in biochemistry, or at least, has a passing interest in chemistry insofar as it related to the environment. Lydia’s own ideas largely expound on her midterm paper, though she is loathe to admit that she’s had a bit of trouble coming up with a project.

At least, not one that could be accomplished by two high school students limited to the underfunded and outdated technology provided by the school district. In short, her project proposals needed some work, but she had some time. She’s been busy.

Anyway, she _had_ something. More than a few somethings. But it couldn’t hurt to hear Cora out.

“Well, we both kind of wrote about pollution, and the effects it has on the environment. We could document the impact of acid rain on local flora, which would combine my thesis, and hypothesize primary causes and whether or not recapturing the waste would be beneficial or efficient on a micro level, which is yours. Or something.” Cora shrugs. She’s not looking at Lydia, clicking her pen and glancing mostly at her notebook. She really had given the project thought. Guilt, or something like it washes through Lydia.

Lydia only realizes she’s staring when Cora looks over, turns beet red, and says, “I mean, it was just one stupid idea—“

She is about to cut Cora off and tell  her that, on the contrary, it’s a good idea, bordering on great, when she remembers the way Cora took her last compliment. _You don’t have to pretend._ ”Okay.” Lydia says, her mind buzzing. It needs some fine-tuning obviously, but, “We might be able to work with that.” There is probably some way they could collect rain water and test the pH. She doubts the local hardware store would have the kind of water testing kits they would need, but Harris might be willing to work with them. Or Amazon.

“No, it’s fine.”

“I’m serious.”

Cora squints at her suspiciously, but doesn’t argue. “It’s short sighted to go with the first idea you have,” Cora says, her voice clipped. “What did you think of?”

Lydia looks down at the list of ideas she has and knows, for the first time, that they won’t be using one of her suggestions for their project. Hers are too complicated, too out of reach, too big picture — it’s not exactly like they could actually try to recapture carbon with the instruments in the chem lab. Cora’s is feasible, combines hypothetical study with something tangible and within range of their abilities. They could condense their findings on a tri-fold.

It leaves a sour taste in her mouth, and her initial excitement for Cora’s idea deflates immediately. She tosses her head, forgetting that she put her hair up in a bun and doesn’t have any to flip. “I didn’t really have any,” she lies.

Cora narrows her eyes, and the bed squeaks a little as she pushes herself more firmly onto the mattress. “Yeah, right.”

Lydia blinks. No one has ever challenged that statement before. Usually she has to navigate around her classmates assuming she doesn’t have anything to contribute, in order to get them to do what she wants without them realizing.

“I read your essay,” Cora says. “You _get_ this shit.” She taps her pen against her notebook loudly.

Smiling a warning, Lydia shakes her head. “Sorry.” Her nail catches on the spiral of the notebook’s spine and she focuses on the press of metal against her skin. She doesn’t like how easily Cora says that. Obviously, Lydia knows she’s good at chemistry — it’s her second favorite subject, she works hard at it — and Mr. Harris knows, and her counselor, but no one else is supposed to know. She shouldn’t have let Cora read her paper.

Although, she thinks, Cora knowing would make this partnership a lot easier. She doesn’t have to like Lydia, nor does Lydia have her to like her, but Cora recognizing Lydia’s superiority in chemistry would mean she doesn’t have to waste any energy manipulating Cora into coming around to her ideas indirectly. It’s not like Cora talks to anyone who matters. It’s not like Cora seems to care all that much about Lydia or her decisions to keep herself private.

It doesn’t change the fact that her proposals were all too ambitious. Even if she’d shared them, they wouldn’t have been able to come anywhere near close to attempting them.

Cora huffs, and leans back, head tilting to the side. “One second you’re Madam fuckin’ Curie, the next you’re Kelly Kapoor? Sure.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Lydia snaps.

“Madam Curie?”

Lydia rolls her eyes. “Kelly Kapoor.”

Cora mutters, “Fine.” She tosses her notebook towards Lydia, and they both watch as it slides off the bed before Lydia leans down to pick it up. “If you want to pretend you don’t have a nobel prize winning project idea scribbled down, we can use mine.”

Downstairs, Prada is barking again, and her dad is shouting at her to be quiet. She and Cora stare at one another as they listen, until finally they hear the sliding doors to the back patio rasp open, and the sound of Prada’s barks moves outside.

It takes the better part of the morning to work out the kinks in their proposal. Lydia thinks they need to condense it down to a more cohesive single idea, instead of two separate parts, but Cora argues the parts already “cohese.” They’re halfway through the outline when Lydia hears the garage door rumble open and close. “Hey, are you hungry?” she asks. It’s 11:20 by now, and the hunger she’d felt earlier can’t be ignored anymore. More than that, she needs coffee. Water first, and then coffee.

“I could eat,” Cora says, with the same pause as always before she answers anything Lydia asks her.

Downstairs, Lydia gestures at the bowl of fruit on the island. “Help yourself. I’m having a bagel if you want one.”

Cora eyes an orange. “They’re not poisoned,” Lydia says.

“Can’t be too careful,” Cora shoots back, before picking one, but her mouth curls into something actually resembling a smile. It’s the first time she’s smiled at Lydia.

She goes through the motions of making her breakfast — brunch, at this time in the day — and remembers to offer Cora coffee or water. Cora watches her silently, peeling apart orange slices and eating them like maybe she’s not supposed to, even though Lydia offered. She can’t remember the last time she had someone over and it wasn’t a party. She prefers meeting classmates at their houses or at the library. They’re lucky both her parents are out this morning; she doesn’t know what she would do if Cora witnessed her parents arguing.

They get through the last half of the proposal, crowded around Lydia’s laptop at the kitchen island. It’s not bad. Cora isn’t quiet, and unlike most of their classmates, doesn’t seem to care whether Lydia likes her or not. She actually seems excited, grinning a bit when Lydia types Cora’s suggestion word for word.

“I’ll share the doc with your school email,” she tells Cora, when Cora’s mom calls.

Cora swipes on the call, and Lydia types in a few more sentences, hearing Cora say to her mother, “Mrs. Reyes can drop me off when she picks up Erica.” A pause. “I’m helping the boys practice, they’ve got tryouts this week. Yeah. Just like, chucking balls at them.”

Lydia realizes Cora can only mean they will be practicing lacrosse, and it wouldn’t be Cora helping _them_ but vice versa. Her fingers tap the keys a little harder than she means to, the click of her nails loud in the quiet kitchen. “Okay. Okay, see you soon in a few.”

Cora has barely hung up before Lydia is blurting, “You still think you’re going to be trying out for the team?”

Over the course of the past hour, they managed to relax into something that could resemble a working partnership. That evaporated as soon as the words left her mouth. Cora stiffens, her expression shuttering closed. “You still think you have any say in whether I do or don’t?”

Lydia sniffs. “I don’t.” Unfortunately. “But Coach Finstock does, and he’ll never let you on the team.”

“We’ll see, won’t we,” Cora says, eyes narrow on Lydia.

“Yes, we will.” Cora’s not much taller than Lydia, but Lydia has to tilt her head back to match Cora’s jerked chin.

They stand like that for a moment, neither of them backing down, when Cora’s phone buzzes again. She looks down, and mutters, “My mom’s here.” Without another word, she turns from the kitchen. Lydia stays where she is, listening as Cora stomps up to Lydia’s room, and then down, backpack in tow. “I’ll look over the proposal tonight,” she says. Lydia nods once, and Cora is gone.

* * *

“Has Jackson’s rose been delivered yet?” Ivy asks. She’s shivering in a gauzy pink sweater that makes Lydia cold just to look at. Her constant battle between the appeal and affordability of fast fashion and practicality is encapsulated in the utter nonsense that is a purported sweater with finger sized crochet and a cropped rise.

A few days of suspiciously warm weather everyone lingering longer out of doors during passing periods, but it’s not nearly warm enough to go without a coat, though Lydia’s dress covers less than Ivy’s sweater. At least Ivy has sleeves.

Ivy’s holding a bouquet of four or five little roses in pinks and yellow. Every Valentine’s Day, the Key Club sold flowers and notes to be delivered throughout the day, and every year girls eyed each other’s bouquets and tried to determine who had the most. Groups of friends might send them to each other, and it is practically required for boyfriends to send them. Five is a good number.

It is ridiculous.

Lydia always clocked in around fifteen.

“Not yet,” she says absently, looking over Nora’s shoulder across the quad, before kicking herself for not lying, but none of the roses she is holding are red, they’d know anyway. She’d had to remind Jackson for a week while the Key Club was selling roses to get one, and she wasn’t totally sure he hadn’t forgotten. She couldn’t be the only girl whose boyfriend didn’t send her a red rose. “He said something about giving it to me in person,” she finishes.

“Awwww,” Ellie coos. Lydia preens a bit with a satisfied smirk, though she catches Ivy’s skeptical expression. “You guys are so cute.”

“Oh hey, are you guys going this weekend?” Nora asks. “Ivy’s parents are out of town.”

There is a chorus of affirmations before all eyes turn to Lydia expectantly. She hasn’t forgotten Ivy’s comments at _her own party_ ; how could she? It was Cassie who said the worst of it, but Ivy had called her a frigid bitch. Ivy, Erica, Cora… She hums. “I don’t know…” she says. “Jackson and I might have better things to do than hang around playing lame games in someone’s basement.”

Nora sucks in a sharp breath, and Ellie’s mouth drops open. Ivy blinks, a blush spreading up her cheeks through her hair, but before she speaks, a voice behind them says, “Lydia, may I speak with you a moment?”

Ms Morrell stands a few feet away, a stack of papers tucked into her arm. Lydia’s face heats up, wondering if the guidance counselor heard her comment. Her expression is as smooth and inscrutable as ever, which has Lydia suspecting she probably had. “Do you have a moment to stop by my office this period?”

Normally, Lydia has meetings with Ms Morrell every two weeks to go over the independent study she’s completing through MIT, but that was last week. “Yeah,” she says. “I have AP Gov next.” She adds hopefully, “But I have phys ed after that.”

“I have a meeting eighth period, unfortunately.” Morrell checks her watch. “Now, would be best for me, actually. I can send you back with a pass.”

The warning bell for the end of the passing break sounds, and students begin clearing the quad.

Morrell’s office is golden with late winter sunlight, and she has a number of plants on her sill that look far happier this week than Lydia has seen them in weeks. Morrell catches her looking and smiles, “Finally some sunlight!”

“I just hope it warms up soon.”

Morrell’s usual thin smile widens a bit. “Beacon Hills is balmy compared to Quebec.” She sits, gesturing at Lydia, but doesn’t pull up anything on her computer or touch any of the files on her desk, just waits for Lydia to sit. Not an academic discussion then. Again, Lydia wonders if Morrell heard her comment — it wasn’t _that_ bad.

“Third quarter parent-teacher conferences are in a few weeks,” Morrell says and Lydia relaxes into her seat. If this is all, she could have saved them both time, and answered Morrell’s next question on the quad. “Have your parents chosen a time slot to attend?”

“My parents never come to conferences.”

“I know,” Morrell says. “But it’s mandatory at least one guardian of a rising senior attends at least one conference with either a current teacher or counselor.”

Lydia looks down to her lap. Her nail polish is chipping — she’s been picking at her nails more and more recently. Her mom would hate it she saw. “Is that really necessary?” she asks. “You obviously know I’m excelling in my studies, and have the next five years rigorously mapped.”

Morrell leans back in her chair, a brow arched.

When Lydia was eight, her mother made her go to a therapist. She was too quiet, too withdrawn, unsociable. They both knew the solution wasn’t therapy, but parents of difficult children alway half hope to find someone else who also cannot manage their child, as if to prove the problem is not with the parent, but with the child. So Lydia went. At eight years old, she didn’t exactly have a choice

Lydia listened to a graying woman with a nice smile and crows feet tell her what wasn’t her fault, like her parents’ rapidly deteriorating relationship, and how, sometimes, adults made decisions children don’t understand, but ultimately it’s almost always for the best, and she ought to listen to them.

The woman was an idiot.

Four sessions later Lydia refused to go any longer. Her mother didn’t argue. The one thing the therapist managed, in four sessions, to convince Lydia not to do was bite her nails, and so Natalie was satisfied. She had been validated.

Morrell looks at Lydia now the way the therapist did sometimes, like she had the answers, even though Lydia knew she couldn’t possibly. How could she know the answers when the questions being asked missed the point entirely?

“I think it would be beneficial for your parents to attend.”

Of course she would. “And if they’re not able to?” Surely she’s not the only student whose parental figure couldn’t attend for one reason or another. To expect every working parent to drop everything seemed a bit much.

“In the case of a student’s guardian being unable to attend the regular conferences, we usually request they work with a counselor — in this case, me — to determine a time and date that works for all parties.” Lydia draws in a breath, and Morrell interrupts with, “Barring that, I write home a summary with your fourth quarter report card.”

“Perfect,” Lydia says. “Let’s skip to that option.”

Morrell frowns at her, but Lydia gets the impression she’s not surprised. “Lydia, you are an incredibly accomplished student, surpassing anyone’s reasonable and unreasonable expectations of a high school junior. Surely your parents must be extremely proud of you?”

Lydia thinks it’s a little tactless for a guidance counselor to ask such a direct question when the answer very well could be a _no_. “Of course,” she doesn’t lie. She suspects her father is more proud of her with what he knows of her academics _now_ than he would be should he find out the current state of her studies. Her mother…

“So,” Morrell says, getting to the actual reason for her leading question, and Lydia realizes she walked right into the trap. “Why don’t you want them to know about parent-teacher conferences?” Even though the warm afternoon sunlight streamed into the little office with golden heat, Lydia wished she’d brought her coat, a slow creep of cold chilling her skin.  
Lydia wasn’t allowed to tell the therapist her grandmother was a lesbian, was living with a woman, had left her husband and her son had disowned her. She wasn’t allowed to explain why her father wouldn’t let her see her computer engineer grandmother and favorite person for what later amounted to nearly three years because her grandmother had moved in with the nice friend who had always hung around _anyway_ and who smelled like lavender and old people. She didn’t need a therapist, she told the woman succinctly, as only eight year olds can, she needed her grandmother. The woman had smiled, and asked why she couldn’t see her. Lydia had bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood and didn’t answer.

“It isn’t that I don’t want them to come to conferences,” Lydia doesn’t lie again. The thought of her parents sitting in a room together, civilly, while Ms Morrell or Mrs Flemming told them their daughter is a borderline genius, is unfathomable. She does relish the thought of their expressions, even their pride… “I just don’t think it would be productive for anyone. I have impressive grades. That can be conveyed through a mailed report card.”

“Lydia, it’s not just that you have impressive grades. Your parents need to be on board with your college choices, and your future. That’s why we require attendance at third quarter conferences junior year. It gives everyone time to plan ahead for the final semester, discuss action plans if needed for applying to schools or coordinating prospective student visits. Many students wait until the start of senior year, but if we can get the ball rolling now, it alleviates a lot of anxiety.”

Lydia wonders if Ms Morrell spends this much time with all of her students. Beacon Hills doesn’t have that many, but a third of the student body is still five hundred or so. A better off school system would be able to afford more counselors, more psychologists, but Beacon Hills did okay for itself, considering the comically harsh divide between the haves and the have nots, and the few who made up the inbetween. A small town built on coal mining and lumber production, with an only fairly recent bloom of hiking and camping tourism to fill in the gaps has left many behind. Lydia already meets with Morrell on alternating Tuesdays to discuss her independent study, and this makes it three times this month alone she’s sat in this office.

“There is also the matter of your class rank.”

Lydia sits ramrod straight, hands clenched in her lap. “Which is?” She does her best not to demand, perfectly cognizant that, although she and Morrell spoke frankly to one another, Ms Morrell is a figure of authority and one Lydia actually cares to respect. Her fingertips are freezing, even as she feels her heart pounding hard in her chest.

Morrell tilts her head, pleased. “Well… I can’t officially say, as we are over a year from graduation…” Every nerve in Lydia’s body is taut, keeping her rooted in place, imploring Morrell to finish her statement. “Howver, factoring in your AP credits _and_ your independent study, your G.P.A hovers currently just under 5.0.” Lydia knows this, obviously. She checks InfiniteCampus nearly daily. Morrell can see her unabashed eagerness, and holds up a hand. “I cannot speak to any other students’ personal academic records, but I think you’re smart enough to infer your rank without my outright saying it.”

Morrell had as good as said it. Lydia feels like she’s going to vibrate out of her seat, mind spinning and clear all at once. Of course she’d be valedictorian; no one could touch her when it came to academics, she’d made sure of that. But Morell knew that too.

“Therefore, I think, having your parents involved with your final year would set you on the best possible track for college,” Morrell finishes, and see, this is where Lydia’s faith in counselors and therapists drops off. Morrell should be able to tell — _is_ able to tell — without Lydia saying, that she doesn’t want her parents involved. So why push the issue? It’s her business. “I assume you’ve talked to your parents about some of your plans, and the projects you’ve taken on this year?”

“Of course.” To take the course through MIT, Lydia had needed her parents’ signature. Her father will sign anything she puts in front of him while he’s on the phone.

In reality, it’s expected for someone of her socioeconomic position to go to college, take out a few tens of thousands of dollars in loans, major in _something,_  and get an office job with absolutely no relation to her major. Her parents expect her to go to college, they don’t really care for what or where. College holds little real value anymore, besides proving she has critical thinking skills —- possibly. Art majors and math majors alike are all subject to the same ‘three years experience required for an entry level job mindlessly entering data paying $11 an hour.’

But Lydia didn’t intend to end up in an office job entering data. She can’t fault people who do, but it’s not where someone of her calibre found themselves seven months after graduation. She had her plans: masters, PhD programs, Field’s Medal. The rest would fall into place, and it didn’t hinge on her parents spending twenty minutes in a classroom with a teacher she’s had for six months.

“They must be very proud of you, then,” Morrell says, and Lydia doesn’t respond, because there is no way to say, ‘of course’ and ‘you don’t know my parents’ in the same breath, even if it’s true. The thought of them together, listening to Morrell telling them her accomplishments, that she’s more than just a dumb cheerleader sends a thrill down her spine. Her mother would beam.

“Your parents will need to contact me directly if they aren’t able to make it,” Morrell says finally. There is only so long Morrell will tolerate Lydia’s obstinance, but Lydia usually leaves feeling as though she’s obtained some sort of upper hand. This time, she doesn’t think she has.

There’s twenty minutes left of AP Gov when she gets there, handing her pass to Mr. Lane before taking her seat. Her eyes glaze over the board and a slide titled “Super PACs (2010-?)”. She writes down the header, but can’t make her pen fill in the rest. She’ll get the powerpoint off BlackBoard later, do her own research.

It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if her parents went to conferences, she reasons. Everyone’s parents go, it’s totally normal. Her’s haven’t gone since she was in fifth grade and it was mandatory. They’ve never needed to — so long as she wasn’t failing, they didn’t care, and she wasn’t totally sure her father didn’t think she was failing everything anyway.

Any parent would be thrilled to find out their child is some sort of wunderkind. Surely, at the minimum, the number of scholarships she’s going to win will save them tons of money — that has to count for something.

“Roses!” A Key Club volunteer cheers from the doorway. Mr Lane sighs at the second interruption, and gestures.

“Get on with it then, hurry up.”

The other students wait eagerly, watching as the volunteers with hearts drawn on their cheeks and fluffy pink headbands spread out. Lydia leans back in her chair, fully aware of how many roses she’s gotten already this morning, and pretending not to be interested.

A bright red rose is placed on her desk by a freshman with glitter in her hair. “Happy Valentine’s Day!” the girl gushes.

Lydia smiles, and picks up the note. “For: Lydia Martin, 7th Hr/Soc Building 218.” So Jackson _had_ remembered. Her cheeks warm at the thought, and stops herself from smiling too widely, even as her heart thumps its approval.

But as soon as she opens the note, she can tell it isn’t from Jackson. The spiky scrawl reads,

 

> Roses are red,
> 
> Ur hair: strawber’ blonde,
> 
> We go together
> 
> Like covalent bonds

The smile vanishing, she looks up at the offender, the only person she’s heard ever call her _red_ hair ‘strawberry blonde’: Stiles Stilinski, three rows away, and fully turned in his seat so he can watch her reaction. As soon as he catches her expression, he swivels around.

Mood plummeting, she crumples up the note, and shoves the rose away, and _is not_ disappointed when the Key Club Cupids leave without dropping off another rose.

At least she’s not the only one with a unwanted admirer.

In the second row, Erica Reyes is viciously tearing the petals from her yellow rose, and the remains of a shredded note already pile on her desk. She stands up to throw it away, and Lydia hears some snickers from the back row, but Erica doesn’t turn around, just fishes dumping the flower in the trash and sits back down, her back ramrod straight.

Lydia’s joins hers after class.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really struggled with this chapter, so I may come back to it with little edits, but for now, it's up. I already have bits of the next chapter written, so I really hope it's faster. I have made that promise a few times, so. Take it with a spoonful of salt maybe. It WILL get done. 
> 
> Shoutout to Taylor for just telling me to post it so i can move on with the rest of the story and come back and fix this later if I need to. I love you, Taylor, please follow your own advice <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 (go read @candyvan's femslash, it's w o n d e r f u l) 
> 
> critique is DEEPLY appreciated, so feel free. hearing feedback really lets me know what you're enjoying or feel needs to be extrapolated on. <3 <3 
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [girlionceknew](http://girlionceknew.tumblr.com) and [g-taire](http://g-taire.tumblr.com). Come say hi!


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